A TREASURY OF HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS

By Herbert V Prochnow and Herbert V Prochnow, Jr

A TREASURY OF HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS THE SUCCESSFUL TOASTMASTER THE PUBLIC SPEAKER S TREASURE CHEST A DICTIONARY OF WIT, WISDOM
& SATffiE

By Herbert V Prochnow

THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM THE NEW SPEAKER S TREASURY OF WIT AND WISDOM SPEAKER S HANDBOOK OF EPIGRAMS AND WITTICISMS DETERMINING 1001 THE BUSINESS OUTLOOK

WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR CONVERSATION & SPEECHES

Herbert V Prochnow With Roy A Foulke

PRACTICAL BANK CREDIT

Edited by Herbert V Prochnow

WORLD ECONOMIC PROBLEMS AND POLICIES GREAT STORIES FROM GREAT LIVES

A TREASURY OF HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS

HERBERT V. PROCHNOW

and

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS

1817

For Speakers, VVriters, and Home Reference

HERBERT

v.

PROCHNOW,

.Jr.

NEW YORK, EVANSTON, AND LONDON

A TREASURY

OF HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS Copyright © 1969 by Herbert V Prochnow and Herbert V Prochnow Ir , Printed III the United States of Amerzca All TIghts reserved No part of this book may be used or repro duced In any manner whatsoever without written permission except III the case of bnei quotations embodied III cntical articles and reviews For tniorma tton address Harper & Row Publishers Incorporated 49 East ssr« Street New York N Y 10016

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS

CATALOG

CARD NUMBER

68

rr822

INTRODUCTION

'By necessity, by prochvity, and by delight, we all quote' So said Ralph Waldo Emerson He might have added that the greatest dehght-for both the speaker and the lIstener-usually comes when the quotation IS humor ous Humorous quotations,' to paraphrase Logan Pearsall Smith, are the salted almonds at reason s feast" They add zest to speeches, wntmg and conversanon, and they are even fun to read Just for themselves Nor should humorous' be taken to mean frivolous", as George Bernard Shaw said, "When a thmg IS funny, look for a hidden truth' With all of these potential benefits It IS surpnsmg to drscover that there has never been a comprehensive anthology of humorous quotations This book has been designed to fill that need The material has been drawn from many lands and all ages from every profession and for all occasions The authors range from ConfUCIUSto Lyndon Johnson from the sophisticated sting of Oscar Wilde to the folksy gentleness of Josh Billings, from the tart defimtions of Ambrose Bierce to the mellowed msrghts of Robert Frost, from the mmistenal Wit of Winston Churchill Benjamin Disraeli and Talleyrand to the man m the street humor of Jimmy Durante, WIll Rogers, and Mark Twain There are over 6,500 entries, compnsmg we believe, an invaluable reference work for speakers writers, and those among us who SImply agree With Sebastien Chamfort that The most wasted day of all IS that on which we have not laughed Successful speakers find scores of uses for humorous quotations We know one clergyman who hkens Ins sermon to a bndge and sees touches of humor as the supporting upnghts he uses humor at the begmnmg, III the middle and at the end, to keep the span from sagging Humor IS useful rn creanng a friendly frame of mmd III the audience, in emphasizmg points III making mtroductions A chairman of a meetmg may say, 'Someone has commented that an acquaintance IS a person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to I should like to present a man who IS more than an acquaintance to me' Or the chairman may say, Josh Billmgs once said When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give It to him ' Our speaker has a reputation for saymg what he believes should be said, and not necessanly what others want him to say" The speaker himself may warm up his audience With a quotation "As Mark Twam says 'It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good Impromptu speech' I myself have had only two weeks to work on my off-the cuff remarks so I hope you will forgive me " Or "To quote George Bernard Shaw, You know very well that after
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a certain age a man has only one speech' I should admit at the outset that what III be saying today IS something I ve said before, but I believe It to be of such Importance ' Or 'I thmk Pnnce Phihp outlined a good way to begin a speech when he said, It IS my mvanable custom to say something flattenng to begin With so that I shall be excused If by any chance I put my foot In It later on ' Or, If the occasion demanded, he could commence by observing As KIn Hubbard once said, Of all subsntutes a substitute speaker IS worst' " The occasion for the speech often suggests a thematic quotation A speaker on America's role in world affairs might set the tone for hIS talk by opemng With the lines from Arnold Toynbee "Amenca IS a large friendly dog in a very small room Every nme It wags ItS tall, It knocks over a chair' I don't think that's the whole picture, but there's more than an inch of truth m It Before a group of bankers, he might say, 'Mark Twain once defined a banker as a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun IS shmmg and wants It back the minute It begins to ram' A modern banker might reply " All a speaker need know IS hIS subject or his audience, and the heavily cross referenced mdex will lead him to dozens of apt and witty remarks to choose from The index IS arranged so that quotations dealing With two or more subjects can be found easily For example, a line touching on automobiles weather and vacations IS indexed under all three subjects It Isn't only the public speaker who can profit from this book The ability to summon up pertment and funny quotations 1D conversation can bnng a great deal of pleasure to you and your friends A quotation like a pun should come unsought,' said Robert Chapman, but nothmg bubbles spontaneously to the surface unless It has been submerged ahead of time And the submerging of humorous quotations can be great fun The reader who browses regularly In this book wrll certainly be pleased and may be astonished at how much of what he casually reads stays With him hidden until some passing remark or topic 10 conversation calls It forth at exactly the right place In a sense, we add quotations to our "vocabulary" 10 much the same way as we do words, and these additions Improve the interest and articulateness of our speech 1D much the same way too For those of us who cannot ourselves invent sayings on a par With Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, It s comfortmg to remember another comment of Emerson s 'Next to the ongmator of a good sentence IS the first quoter of It ' It bnngs satisfacnon to ourselves, delight to our listeners, enhancement to the subject, and-perhaps we can say-a tribute and compliment to the ongmator of the lme As Alexander Smith said, "To be occasionally quoted IS the only fame I care for '
RERBERT V PROCHNOW RERBERT V PROCHNOW, JR

A TREASURY OF HUMOROUS QUOTATIONS

•••

• ••

ABILITY He [Napoleon III] IS a great unrecognized incapacity Otto von BIS marck What does It take to be an Archbishop of Canterbury? The strength of a horse-and the ability to be a cart horse one day and a race horse the next Geoffrey FIsher In the last analysis, ability IS commonly found to consist mainly In a high degree of solemnity Ambrose BIerce The university brings out all abihnes, including mcapabrhty Anton Chekhov A traveler at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedae monian, "I do not believe you can do as much" "True," sard he, • but every goose can" Plutarch The ablest man I ever met IS the man you think you are Delano Roosevelt ABLE Frankltn

ABROAD I dislike feeling at home when I m abroad George Bernard Shaw He who wants to steal abroad needs a local helper Chinese Proverb Absence IS one of the most useful Ingredients of family life, and to use It rightly IS an art hke any other Freya Stark That common cure of love Miguel de Cervantes Absence makes the heart grow fonder-of somebody else Anonymous A woman absent IS a woman dead Ambrose Bierce What IS better than presence of mind In a railway accident? Absence of body Punch Never was the absent 1D the right Spanish Proverb The absent and the dead have no friends Ibid Lord Dudley was one of the most absentmmded men I thmk I ever met In society One day he met me In the street, and invited me to meet myself Dine WIth me today dme With me, and I will get Sydney Smith to meet you ' I admitted the temptation he held out to me, but said I was engaged to meet him elsewhere Sydney Smith. You gazed at the moon and fell 10 the gutter Thomas Fuller I was hke the countryman who looked for his donkey while mounted on Its back Miguel de Cervantes

ABSENCE

ABSENTMINDED

19

Objection, evasion, distrust and irony are signs of health absolute belongs to pathology F W Nietzsche Abstainer a weak person who Yields to the temptation himself a pleasure Ambrose Bierce

ABSOLUTE Everythmg ABSTAINER of denying

20

ABSTINENCE 21 Abstinence IS as easy to me as temperance would be difficult Samuel Johnson 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 ABSURD There IS no opInIon so absurd but that some philosopher Will express It Cicero The reductio ad absurdum IS God s favorite argument George Tyrrell ABSURDITY Every custom was once an eccentricity every Idea was once an absurdity Holbrook Jackson Absurdity a statement or belief mamfestly inconsistent WIth one sown opmion Ambrose Bierce Every absurdity has a champion to defend It Oliver Goldsmith ABUSE What you can't have, abuse Italzan Proverb When you have no baSIS for an argument, abuse the plamtiff Cicero

ACCEPT 'I accept the universe IS reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, and when someone repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle his sardomc comment IS said to have been, 'Gad' she'd better' William James

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ACCIDENT He IS so unlucky that he runs into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else Don MarqUIS 31 Sometimes there are accidents In our life the skillful extraction from which demands a little folly Francois de La Rochefoucauld 32 ACCident an inevitable occurrence due to the action of Immutable natural laws Ambrose Bierce 33 Someone said that Providence IS the Chnstian name of ACCident and someone devout may say that ACCIdent IS a nickname of Providence Nicolas Chamfort 34 ACCOMPLISH Every man who IS high up loves to thmk that he has done It all himself, and the Wife smiles, and lets It go at that James M Barrie 35 There ISnothing more disappomnng than faihng to accomplish a thmg, unless It IS to see somebody else accomplish It Henry S Haskins

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ACCURACY In all pointed sentences some degree of accuracy must be sacnficed to conciseness Samuel Johnson After having spent years m stnvmg to be accurate, we must spend as many more 10 discovenng when and how to be inaccurate Samuel Butler ACHIEVEMENT The world IS moving SOfast these days that the man who says It can't be done IS generally mterrupted by someone domg It Elbert Hubbard Achievement the death of endeavor and the birth of disgust Ambrose Bierce About all some men accomplish In hfe IS to send a son to Harvard Edgar W Howe M Zola IS deterrnmed to show that, If he has not got genIUS he can at least be dull Oscar Wilde It IS an Immense advantage to have done nothing but one should not abuse It Comte de Rtvarol Back of every achievement IS a proud WIfe and a surprised mother-inlaw Brooks Hays ACQUAINTANCE A WIse man knows everything, a shrewd one everybody Anonymous Acquaintance a person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to Ambrose Bierce Acquaintance a degree of fnendship called shght when Its object IS poor and obscure, and intimate when he IS rich and famous Ibid An acquaintance that begins With a compliment IS sure to develop mto a real fnendship Oscar Wzlde
If you achieve success you will get applause, and If you get applause,

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ACTING

you will hear It My advice to you concernIng applause IS this EnJOYIt but never qUIte believe It Robert Montgomery The actor who took the role of King Lear played the king as though he expected someone to play the ace Eugene Field ACTION Old nothmg in particular And did It very well W S Gilbert The basis of action IS lack of rmagmatron It IS the last resource of those who know not how to dream Oscar Wilde Action indeed, IS always easy, and when presented to us in Its most aggravated, because more continuous form, which I take to be that of real industry becomes simply the refuge of people who have nothmg whatever to do Ibid Men of thought should have nothing to do With action Ibid Actions lie louder than words Carolyn Wells

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ACTOR When an actor has money, he doesn t send letters, but telegrams Anton Chekhov Some of the greatest love affairs I ve known have Involved one actorunassisted Wilson Mizner An actor IS a sculptor who carves In snow Lawrence Barrett Every actor 10 his heart believes everything bad that s pnnted about him Orson Welles I have long wanted to produce a Hamlet which would be a play rather than a case of dyspepsia Maurice Evans Acting comes easy and pays well, that's the narcotic John Barrymore There are various theories of why people become actors, from the exhibmonistrc urge to a desire to sleep late mormngs Arthur Hopkzns Some actors think they are elevatmg the stage when they re merely depressing the audience George A Posner You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves Michael WZldzng You know, actmg makes you feel hke a burglar somenmes=-takmg all that money for all that fun Pat 0 Brien The scenery In the play was beautiful, but the actors got 10 front of It Alexander Woollcott Actors are the only honest hypocrites William Hazlut Alfred Lunt has his head 10 the clouds and his feet 10 the box office Noel Coward Beggars, actors, buffoons and all that sort Horace Be a httle upon your guard remember he IS an actor Horace Walpole

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ACTRESS Playing Shakespeare IS very tmng You never get to Sit down unless you're a king Josephine Hull 71 For an actress to be a success she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros Ethel Barrymore 72 I got all the schoolmg any actress needs That IS, I learned to wnte enough to Sign contracts Hermione Gingold 73 Actresses wtll happen lD the best-regulated farnihes Oliver Herford 74 75 Adage boned Wisdom for weak teeth Ambrose Bierce ADAGE ADAM

When Eve upon the first of men The apple pressed, With specious cant, Oh I what a thousand pines then That Adam was not adamant I Thomas Hood

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Adam Invented love at first sight, one of the greatest labor saving machines the world ever saw Josh Billings I wish Adam had dred WIth all hIS nbs In hIS body Dum Bouctcault Madam, I'm Adam Anonymous Adam Had em Strickland Gillilan We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race he brought death into the world Mark Twazn What could Adam have done to God that made HIm put Eve In the garden? Polish Proverb ADAM AND EVE Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the prmcipal one was that they escaped teething Mark Twazn Whilst Adam slept, Eve from hIS SIde arose Strange hIS first sleep would be hIS last repose Anonymous Adam ate the apple and our teeth still ache Hungarian Proverb ADHERENT Adherent a follower who has not yet obtained all .j:hat he expects to get Ambrose Bzerce
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As to the adjective

when

In

doubt, strike It out

_ ADJECTIVE Mark Twazn

ADMIRATION Tell me George [Gershwin] If you had to do It over would you fall in love WIth yourself again? Oscar Levant 88 Every man loves and admires hIS own country because It produced him Edward G Bulwer Lytton 89 DIstance IS a great promoter of admiranon Dents Dtderot 90 The time he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his dunes Bentamin Jowett 91 Admiration our pohte recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves Ambrose BIerce 92 I admire him [Cecil Rhodes] I frankly confess It, and when hIS time comes, I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake Mark Twazn 93 It IS only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art Oscar Wzlde 94 Admrration IS the daughter of Ignorance Thomas Fuller 95 Thmgs not understood are admired Ibid 96 Admiratron begms where acquaintance ceases Samuel Johnson 97 We always love those who admire us, but we do not always love those whom we admire Francois de La Rochefoucauld 98 ADOPTION It takes more trouble and as much risk to adopt a son as to get one In the ordinary way Samuel Butler

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ADULT An adult IS one who has ceased to grow vertically but not horizontally Anonymous ADULTERY Adultery democracy applied to love H L Mencken ADVANTAGE To have the license number of one's automobile as low as possible IS a SOCIaladvantage in America Andre MaurOIS ADVERSARY Treating your adversary with respect IS glVlng him an advantage to which he IS not entitled Samuel Johnson In all matters of opmion our adversaries are msane Mark Twain

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ADVERSITY By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity Another man's, I mean Mark Twazn 105 I'll say thrs for adversity people seem to be able to stand It and that S more than I can say for prosperity Frank McKznney Hubbard 106 In the adversity of our best friends we often find something that IS not wholly displeasmg to us Francois de La Rochefoucauld 107 Adversity an experience that introduces a man to himself Anonymous 108 Adversity IS the state in which a man most easily becomes ac quamted With himself being especially free from admirers then Samuel Johnson ADVERTISING If you don t advertise yourself, you WIll be advertised by your loving enemies Elbert Hubbard 110 It used to be that a fellow went on the police force after everythmg else failed, but today he goes In the advertismg game Ibid 111 Advertismg may be descnbed as the SCIence of arrestmg the human intelligence long enough to get money from It Stephen Leacock 112 A vice president 10 an advertismg agency IS a 'molehill man" A molehill man IS a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 A M and finds a molehill on hIS desk He has until 5 P M to make this molehill Into a mountain An accomphshed molehill man will often have hIS mountain finished even before lunch Fred Allen 113 Advertrsmg IS 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission Ibid 114 Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertismg Mark Twam 115 When I had looked at the lights of Broadway by night, I said to my American friends •What a glonous garden of wonders this would be, to anyone who was lucky enough to be unable to read" GK Chesterton 109

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I do not read advertIsements-I would spend all my time wanting thmgs Archbishop of Canterbury Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on m a news paper Thomas Jefferson You have to do a little braggmg on yourself even to your relanves-« man doesn't get anywhere WIthout advertismg John Nance Garner ADVICE Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer In a position to grve bad examples Francois de La Rochefoucauld When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants and I gtve It to him Josh Billings Advice IS like castor OIl, easy enough to give but dreadfully uneasy to take Ibid Advice IS a drug m the market the supply always exceeds the de mand Ibid In those days he was WIser than he IS now he used frequently to take my advice Sir Winston Churchill To profit from good advice reqUIres more WIsdom than to gIve It John Churton Collins If you want to get nd of somebody, Just tell 'em sornethmg for their own good Frank McKmney Hubbard A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying If It weren't for the advice of our friends Ibid We ask advice but we mean approbation Charles C Colton A good scare IS worth more to a man than good advice Edgar W Howe "Be yourself!" IS about the worst advice you can give some people Tom Masefield I have found the best way to give advice to your children IS to find out what they want and then advise them to do It Harry S Truman I grve myself sometimes admirable advice, but I am Incapable of taking It Mary Wortley Montagu It IS as easy to grve advice to yourself as to others, and as useless Austm 0 Malley It IS always a SIlly thing to give advice, but to give good advice IS absolutely fatal Oscar Wilde People are very fond of giving away what they most need themselves It IS what I caIl the depth of generosity Ibid The only thing to do WIth good advice IS to pass It on, It IS never of any use to oneself Ibid GIve me all the other advice you hke, but don't tell me how to bnng up my children, tram my dog fish for trout, scramble eggs, cast my vote, select a football game, buy meat, eat lobster, appreciate

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good mUSIC,Improve my disposition, relax, or prepare myself for heaven William Feather It IS traditronal on these occasions for me to give you a bit of advice, WhICh you WIll equally tradrnonally Ignore Prince Philip Never get up WIth the lark Get up only for a lark Lord Boyd Orr Advice the smallest current COIn Ambrose Bierce Good advrce IS one of those mjunes which a good man ought, If possible to forgive, but at all events to forget at once Horace Smith Never mmd what I told you-you do as I tell you W C Fields Perhaps one of the only POSItIve pIeces of advice that I was ever given was that supplied by an old courtier, who observed Only two rules really count Never mISS an opportunity to relieve yourself never mISSa chance to SIt down and rest your feet Duke of Windsor On Boston Clear out eight hundred thousand people and preserve It as a museum pIece Frank Lloyd Wright On Pittsburgh Abandon It Ibid Never advise anyone to go to war or to marry Spanish. Proverb A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes Joseph Addison Advice IS not disliked because It IS advice, but because so few people know how to gIve It Leigh Hunt He had only one vanity he thought he could give advice better than any other person Mark Twain If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite, you can be sure It w111be the nght thing nme out of ten times Anselm Feuerbach I remember my father telling me the story of the preacher delrvenng an exhortation to hIS flock, and as he reached the climax of hIS exhortatron a man In the front row got up and said, '0 Lord, use me Use me, 0 Lord-m an advisory capacity'" Adlai Stevenson The advice of old age gives light without heat, like the WInter sun Luc de Vauvenargues If a man loves to give advice, It IS a sure sign that he himself wants It Lord Halifax

AFFECTATION 153 Don't laugh at a youth for hIS affectations, he IS only trying on one 154 Affectation IS a more ternble enemy to fine faces than the smallpox
Szr Richard Steele face after another to find hIS own Logan Pearsall Smith

AFFECTION 155 In rune cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection
than she feels Jane Austen

156 All my hfe, affection has been showered upon me, and every forward
step I have made has been taken
In

sprte of It

George Bernard Shaw

157

AFFLICTIONS Many would be willing to have afflictions provided that they be not mconvemenced by them Sf Francis de Sales AFTER DINNER SPEECH There IS but one pleasure In hfe equal to that of being called on to make an after dinner speech and that IS not being called on to make one Charles Dudley Warner

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AGE At eighteen one adores at once at twenty, one loves at thirty, one desires, at forty, one reflects Paul de Kock 160 I'm SIxty five and I guess that puts me m WIth the genatncs But If there were fifteen months In every year I'd only be forty-eight That's the trouble WIth US We number everything Take women, for ex ample I thmk they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of twenty eight and forty James Thurber 161 Threescore years and ten IS enough, If a man can t suffer all the misery he wants In that tune, he must be numb Josh Btlltngs 162 Age that penod of life m which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterpnse to commit Ambrose Bierce 163 The monumental pomp of age William Wordsworth 164 The tragedy of old age IS not that one IS old, but that one IS young Oscar WIlde As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anythmg at all Ibid 166 As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she IS perfectly satisfied Ibid 167 No woman should ever be qurte accurate about her age-It looks so calculatmg Ibid 168 One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age, a woman who would tell one that would tell one anything Ibid 169 Thirty-five IS a very attractive age, London SOCIetyIS full of women who have of their own free choice remamed thirty five for years Ibid 170 Young men want to be faithful and are not, old men want to be faithless and cannot Ibid 171 He IS old enough to know worse Ibid ~ To me, old age IS always fifteen years older than I am' Bernard M Baruch 173 Age IS only a number, a CIpher for the records A man can t retire hIS experIence He must use It Expenence achieves more WIth less energy and time Ibid 174 MIddle age when you begin to exchange your emotions for symptoms Irvin S Cobb

10

175 Many a man that can t direct you to a corner drugstore will get a 176
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respectful heanng when age has further impaired his mind Fmley Peter Dunne A woman IS as old as she looks to a man that hkes to look at her Ibzd We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count Ralph Waldo Emerson All would lrve long, but none would be old Benjamtn Franklin At twenty years of age the WIll reigns, at thirty the WIt at forty the Judgment Ibid Whenever a man s fnends begin to compliment him about looking young he may be sure that they think he IS growmg old Washington Irvzng To be seventy years young IS sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old Oliver Wendell Holmes If you want to know how old a woman IS ask her sister m law Edgar W Howe As soon as a man acqU1res fairly good sense It IS said that he IS an old fogy Ibid Only the young die good Oltver Herford Middle age IS the time when a man IS always thinking that In a week or two he will feel as good as ever Don Marquis One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, ISthat of not gozng But don t I like to enJoy myself? By not gozng that IS Just what I am trying to do J B Priestley I am In the pnme of semlity Ascribed to Joel Chandler Hams When a woman tells you her age, It s all right to look surpnsed, but don't scowl WIlson MIzner LIfe s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest Ibid Be gentle m old age, peevishness IS worse In second childhood than 10 first George D Prentice ~ome old women and men grow bitter WIth age, the more their teeth drop out the more bitmg they get Ibid The thmg to do IS to make so much money that you don't have to work after the age of twenty-seven In case thrs IS Impracticable, stop work at the earliest possible moment, even If It IS at a quarter past eleven m the mornIng of the day when you find you have enough money Robert Benchley The beauty of being young IS that so many things have, delusively, a personal reference to you, only to age IS It plain that things matter and you don't Lord Vanstttart Ve get too soon old and too late smart Anonymous One of the mam tbmgs, at my age [57] IS to avoid stram- 'pushmg

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forward' (as you do when you are 10 a taxi and are getting late for an appointment) Arnold Bennett A man of SIX.tyhas spent twenty years 10 bed and over three years In eating Ibid The first forty years of hfe give us the text the next thirty supply the commentary Arthur Schopenhauer Middle age when you're SItting at home on Saturday night and the telephone rmgs and you hope It isn t for you Ogden Nash One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age IS that It S such a mce change from being young Dorothy Canfield Fisher Goethe, he mused, was older than me when he was wnting love poems to young girls Renoir at eighty-six Titian, Voltaire, Verdi composed Falstaff at eighty But artists are perhaps excep nons Munel Spark Middle age IS when your age starts to show around your middle Bob Hope Old men are dangerous It doesn t matter to them what IS gomg to happen to the world George Bernard Shaw Old age Isn't so bad when you consider the alternative Maunce Chevalier A lady of a "certain age," which means certainly aged Lord Byron The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest You are always bemg asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down T S Eliot Growing old IS no more than a bad habit WhICh a busy man has no time to form Andre Maurots TIme and tide walt for no man-but time always stands still for a woman of thirty Robert Frost At fifty a man can be an ass without being an optnmst but not an optimist without being an ass Mark Twain I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly, but their wives had grown old These were good women, It IS very weanng to be good Ibid Methuselah lived to be 969 years old, but what of that? There was nothing doing He rmght as well have hved to be a thousand You boys and girls WIll see more 10 the next fifty years than Methuselah saw In hIS whole hfetime Ibid I was young and foolish then, now I am old and foohsher Ibid Youth had been a habrt of hers for so long that she would not part WIth It Rudyard Kipling I can tell a woman's age In half a mmute=-and I do W S Gilbert The trouble WIth our age IS all signposts and no destmation Louis Kronenberger

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Age IS no cause for veneration An old crocodile IS still a menace and an old crow sings not hke a mghtmgale Dagobert D Runes When you rejoice over being young, and notice how well you feel that IS age Jules Renard AGENTS All press agents belong to a club of which Anamas IS the honorary president John Kendrick Bangs 'Of course you fashion Just now nostic conscience WIth the modern AGNOSTIC are quite rrrehgious?' Oh, by no means The IS a Roman Catholic frame of mmd with an ag you get the medieval picturesqueness of the one converuences of the other" H H Munro (Saki)

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AGREE When you say that you agree to a thing In prmciple, you mean that J you have not the slightest mtention of carrYlOg It out 10 practice Otto von Bismarck 220 When people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong Oscar Wilde 221 If you wish to appear agreeable 10 society you must consent to be '-!taught many things which you already know Johann Lavater 222 The chronic grumbler IS a church social compared to the fellow that agrees with everything you say Frank McKmney Hubbard 223 The fellow that's pleased with everything either don't cut any Ice or has something up hIS sleeve Ibid 224 Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest Ibid My Idea of an agreeable person IS a person who agrees with me Beruamin Duraeli 226 The greatest mistake IS the trymg to be more agreeable than you can be Walter Bagehot 211 227 A gentleman's agreement IS ment, between two persons each expectmg the other to no mtennon of being bound Blessed be agnculture=-rf Charles Dudley Warner AGREEMENT an arrangement which IS not an agreeneither of whom IS a gentleman, With be strictly bound while he himself has at all Iustice Valsey one does not have AGRICULTURE too much of It AILMENT premature

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One of the commonest ailments of the present day formation of an OpInIOn Frank McKznney Hubbard

IS

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AIN'T Maybe ain't ain't so correct but I notice that lots of folks who ain't USlOgain't ain't eatmg Will Rogers

ALCOHOL 23):' All I can say IS that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me Sir Winston Churchill

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ALIMONY A lot of women are gettmg alimony who don't earn It Don Herold You never realize how short a month IS until you pay alimony John Barrymore The wages of sm IS ahmony Carolyn Wells Alimony IS hke buying oats for a dead horse Arthur Bugs' Baer The cash surrender value of a husband Anonymous ALLERGY I used to wake up at 4 A M and start sneezing sometimes for five hours I tried to :find out what sort of allergy I had but :finally came to the conclusion that It must be an allergy to consciousness James Thurber ALLIANCE In mternational politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply mserted m each other s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third Ambrose Bierce ALMS I do not give alms I am not poor enough for that F W Nietzsche The greatest of almsgivers IS cowardice Ibid Steal the hog and gIve the feet for alms George Herbert ALONE Ambrose Bierce When you become used to never being alone you may consider yourself Amencanized Andre Maurots The man who lives by himself and for himself IS apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps Charles H Parkhurst I wander about those great empty streets of Boston and I never see a Irving creature I could not be more alone In the Sahara Henry James Many people lrve alone and like It, but most of them hve alone and look It Gelett Burgess In GeneSIS It says that It IS not good for a man to be alone, but sometimes It IS a great relief John Barrymore ALPHABET

238

239

240
241

242 Alone m bad company

243

244 245
246

248 I often think how much easier life would have been for me and

how much time I should have saved If I had known the alphabet I can never tell where I and J stand WIthout saying G H to myself first I don't know whether P comes before R or after, and where T comes In has to this day remained something that I never have been able to get into my head W Somerset Maugham

14

249

ALTERATION Alteration IS not always Improvement, as the pIgeon said when It got out of the net and mto the pIe Charles Haddon Spurgeon ALTRUISM The poor are the only consistent altruists They sell all that they have and gIve to the nch Holbrook Jackson There are no amateurs, £douard Manet AMATEURS but only those who pamt bad pictures

250

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252

AMBASSADOR An ambassador IS an honest man sent to he abroad for the com monwealth Sir Henry Wotton

AMBITION Ambition IS the last refuge of the failure Oscar Wilde Ambition an overwhelmmg desire to be vilified by enemies while hvmg, and made ndiculous by friends when dead Ambrose Bierce V Walter Savage Landor 255 Ambmon IS but avance on snlts and masked 256 Ambmon often puts men upon doing the meanest offices so climbmg IS performed In the same posture WIth creepmg Jonathan SWift Ntcolas 257 Love IS a pleasing folly, ambrnon IS a serious stupidity Chamfort German Proverb 258 Every eel hopes to become a whale 253 254

259 We expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and
260 261 262 263 264

AMERICA

265 266

ever more neighborly to revere God and be God Damel Boorsttn In the Umted States there IS more space where nobody IS than where anybody IS ThIS IS what makes America what It IS Gertrude Stem The trouble WIth Amenca IS that there are far too many WIde open spaces surrounded by teeth Charles Luckman America IS the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspmn for one dollar, and use It up In two weeks John Barrymore America IS a large, friendly dog In a very small room Every time It wags Its tall, It knocks over a chair Arnold Toynbee A good many of us today are content to be fat, dumb and happy WIth a polyunsaturated diet, the coming thirty five hour week the fly-now pay-later vacation and fringe benefits, many of us hve ID a chromium plated world where the major enemy we face IS crabgrass John H Glenn Jr It was wonderful to find America, but It would have been more wonderful to miss It Mark Twain Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but It had always been hushed up Oscar Wilde

267

268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283

The youth of America IS their oldest tradinon It has been going on now for three hundred years To hear them talk we would imagine they were In their first childhood As far as civilization goes they are In their second Ibid It IS absurd to say that there are nerther rums nor CUrIOSItIesIn Amenca when they have their mothers and their manners Ibzd When good Americans die they go to Pans when bad Americans dre, they go to America I bid Perhaps, after all Amenca never has been discovered I myself would say that It had merely been detected Ibzd The thmg that Impresses me most about America IS the way parents obey their children Duke of Windsor It IS only In the upper-class level that each husband srts next to the other man's WIfe Louis Kronenberger This WIll never be a ctvihzed country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum Elbert Hubbard The United States IS the greatest law factory the world has ever known Charles Evans Hughes America IS the only nation In history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration WIthout the usual Interval of crvihzation Georges Clemeneeau The last abode of romance and other medieval phenomena Eric Ltnklater I think the American public wants a solemn ass as a President And I thmk 111 go along WIth them Calvin Coolidge The Umted States never lost a war or won a conference Will Rogers No one ever went broke underestrmatmg the taste of the American public H L Mencken Amenca IS a young country WIth an old mentahty George Santayana In America an hour IS forty minutes German Proverb AMERICAN Some Americans need hyphens in their name because only part of them has come over Woodrow Wilson Some American delusions 1 That there IS no class consciousness In the country 2 That American coffee IS good 3 That Americans are businesslike 4 That Americans are highly sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others W Somerset Maugham The American nation In the SIxth Ward IS a fine people,' he says 'They love th' eagle,' he says on the back IV a dollar" Finley Peter Dunne

284

16

285 The French look exactly like French

the faces of Dutchmen are Dutch Danes look like Danes and Egyptians look very Canahsh Amencans have a sad countenance They probably look like this because they developed catarrh when they landed on Plymouth Rock Sir Alfred Richardson I am willing to love all mankmd except an American Samuel 286 Iohnson 287 The Americans, like the Enghsh probably make love worse than any other race Walt Whitman The roo percent American IS 99 percent an idiot George Bernard 288 Shaw ThIS IS Oscar Levant speaking It's an identiflcatron that I have to make because I suffer from amnesia Oscar Levant Amnesty the state's magnammrty to those offenders whom It would be too expensive to purush Ambrose Bierce

289

AMNESIA

290

AMNESTY

291

Amusement IS the happiness of those that cannot thmk Alexander Pope 292 Life, It seems to me, IS worth lrvmg, but only If we avoid the amusements of grown up people Robert Lynd 293 LIfe would be tolerably agreeable If It were not for Its amusements George CLewIs 294 What a pity It IS that we have no amusements in England but vice and religion' Sydney Smith 295 Anatomy IS to physiology as geography to history theater of events lean F ernel It describes the

AMUSEMENT

ANATOMY

296

.r

Heredity IS an omnibus In which all our ancestors ride Oliver Wendell Holmes 297 Each has his own tree of ancestors but at the top of all sits Probably Arboreal Robert LOUIS Stevenson 298 You should study the Peerage It IS the best thmg In fiction the English have ever done Oscar Wilde 299 Genealogy an account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his own Ambrose Bierce Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee much later than others Frank McKznney Hubbard 301 Everyone has ancestors and It IS only a question of going back far enough to find a good one H K Nixon

ANCESTOR

302 303 304

My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower but they were there to meet the boat Will Rogers It IS indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors Plutarch Our ancestors are a very good kind of folks but they are the last people I should choose to have a vismng acquaintance with Richard Bnnsley Sheridan ANCESTRY My father was a Creole, hIS father a Negro and hIS father a monkey, my family It seems begins where yours left off Ascnbed to Alexandre Dumas pere on being asked Who was your father? If you would civihze a man begm WIth hIS grandmother VIctor Hugo The man who has not anything to boast of but hIS illustrious an cestors IS like a potato-the only good belonging to him IS under ground SIr Thomas Overbury The pride of ancestry Increases m the ratio of distance GW Curtis ANECDOTE A good storyteller IS a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven t Irvin S Cobb ANGELS Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been gettmg a ltttle lower ever SInce Josh Billings If a man IS only a httle lower than the angels the angels should reform M W Little In these days you must go to heaven to find an angel Polisn Proverb ANGER This makes me so sore It gets my dandruff up Samuel Goldwyn Anger makes dull men witty but It keeps them poor Franczs Bacon Anger Improves nothing except the arch of a eat's back Coleman Cox An angry man opens hrs mouth and shuts up his eyes Cato The worst tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong WIlSOIl Mizner ANGLICAN CHURCH The ment claimed for the Anglican Church IS that, If you let It alone It Will let you alone Ralph Waldo Emerson Blessed are the ammals, they have no history Fnednch ANIMALS Hebbel

305

..,./'

306
307 308

309

310
/
/

-/

3J1 312 313 314 315 316 317

318

319

18

ANTHOLOGISTS

APPEARANCE

320 321 322 323

If modern crvihzed man had to kill the animals he eats the number of vegetanans would nse astronomically Christian Morgenstern Animals are such agreeable friends they ask no questions pass no cnticisms George Eliot Animals talk to each other I never knew but one man who could understand them-I knew he could because he told me so himself
Mark Twazn

./

A dragon stranded In shallow water furnishes shrimps Chinese Proverb

amusement

for the

324

ANTHOLOGISTS Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best ones and winding up by eating everything Nicolas Chamfort ANTIVIVISECTIONIST Antrvrvrsecnomst one who gags at a gUInea pig and swallows a baby H L Mencken The thmner the Ice, the more anxious Will bear Josh Btllings
IS

325

326

ANXIETY everyone to see whether It

327 328 329 330

331

APHORISMS An aphorism IS never exactly true It IS either a half truth or oneand a half truths Karl Kraus Almost every wise saying has an opposite one no less wise to balance It George Santayana Belief In form, but disbelief m content-that s what makes an aphorIsm charmmg F W Nietzsche It IS said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to Invent an aphorism to be ever In View, and which should be true and appropriate m all times and situations They presented him the words "And this, too shall pass away" Abraham Lincoln Aphorisms are salted and not sugared almonds at Reason's feast
Logan Pearsall Smith

332 333

APOLOGY Apology IS only egotism wrong Side out Oliver Wendell Holmes Apologize to lay the foundation for a future offense Ambrose
Bierce

334

APOSTLES I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the Apostles but a great deal about their Acts Horace Mann

!:

IS

APPEARANCE only shallow people who do not Judge by appearances Oscar

APPEASER ARCHAEOLOGY

19

A red nosed man may not be a drunkard, but he will always be called one Chinese Proverb 337 Things are seldom what they seem Skim milk masquerades as cream W S GIlbert 338 He [Calvin Coolidge] looks as If he had been weaned on a pickle Al,ce Roosevelt Longworth 339 By outward show let's not be cheated An ass should like an ass be treated John Gay 340 If the beard were all goats could preach Danzsh Proverb 341 He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went In for a career of Its own Margaret Halsey 342 Very few people look the part and are It too Don Herold 343 Nothmg prevents us from being natural so much as the desire to appear so Francois de La Rochefoucauld 34~Barrmg that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the / man looked honest enough Mark Twazn 345 An appeaser IS one who feeds a crocodrle-i-hopmg last SIr Wznston Churchill It
Will

336

APPEASER eat him APPETITE

346 347 348 349 350 351

Sharp stomachs make short graces Scotch Proverb All thmgs reqUire skill but an appetite George Herbert

APPLAUSE About the only person we ever heard of that wasn't spoiled by being homzed was a Jew named Daniel George D Prentice Applause the echo of a platitude Ambrose Bterce APPLE A IS an apple sour and green Working In Tommy but cannot be seen Anonymous Colendge holds that a man cannot have a pure mmd who refuses apple dumphngs Charles Lamb APRIL 1 This IS the day upon which we are remmded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four Mark Twazn ARCHAEOLOGY An archaeologist IS the best husband any woman can have the older she gets, the more Interested he is In her Agatha Chrtstte Archaeology sounds hke dull sport In five syllables It Isn't It's the Peeping Tom of the SCIences It IS the sandbox of men who care not where they are gomg, they merely want to know where every-

352

353 354

20

ARCHITECT ARGUE

355 356 357 358 359

ARCHITECT Sir Chnstopher Wren said, 'I am gOlOg to dine with some men If anybody calls say I am designmg St Paul's' Edmund Clerthew
Bentley

I think It IS worth remembenng when you look around, that everythmg that has not been made by God has probably been perpetrated by an architect Pnnce Philip Architect one who drafts a plan of your house and plans a draft of your money Ambrose Bierce To build IS to be robbed Samuel Iohnson A chair IS a very difficult object A skyscraper IS almost easier That IS why Chippendale IS famous Ludwig Mtes van der Rohe ARCHIVES and then we will go together into the solemn archives of oblrvion s Uncatalogued LIbrary Oliver Wendell Holmes ARGUE It IS a difficult matter my fellow crtizens to argue With the belly, since It has no ears Cato I always get the better when I argue alone Oliver Goldsmith I am not argumg with you-I am telhng you James Mctseil;
Whistler

360

361 362 363 364

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealmg to authority IS not usmg his mtelhgence he IS Just usmg his memory Leonardo da
VinCI

I have won every argument I ever had WIth myself William Feather It IS Impossible to defeat an Ignorant man In argument Wzll,am G
McAdoo

369 370 371 372 373 374 375

Argument 18 the worst sort of conversation lonathan SWIft When you convert someone to an Idea you lose your faith In It Oscar WIlde It IS only the intellectually lost who ever argue Ibid A man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument IS a thoroughly unreasonable person which accounts for so much In women that their husbands never appreciate in them Ibid I dislike arguments of any kmd They are always vulgar, and often

convmcing

Ibtd

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody In good society holds exactly the same opmions Ibid Behmd every argument IS someone S Ignorance LOUIS Dembitz Brandeis Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who IS not hungry always gets the best of the argument Archbishop Whately The Socratic manner IS not a game at WhICh two can play Max

ARISTOTLE ARNOLD, MATTHEW

21

There IS no arguIng WIth him for If hIS pistol misses fire he knocks you down with the butt end of It Oliver Goldsmith 377 I never make the mistake of argumg WIth people for whose OpInIOnS I have no respect Edward GIbbon 378 If you are dealing WIth a fool, dictate but never argue for you WIll lose your labor and perhaps your temper Oliver Wendell Holmes j 379 He draweth out the thread of hIS verbosity finer than the staple of hIS argument William Shakespeare It IS not necessary to understand thmgs In order to argue about them Caron de Beaumarchats \)81 When you have no baSISfor an argument, abuse the plamtrff CIcero 382 The best way of answerIng a bad argument IS to let It go on Sydney Smub 3'83 If you can't answer a man's arguments all IS not lost you can I' still call him vile names Elbert Hubbard 384 The best way I know of to WIn an argument IS to start by being In the right Lord Hailsham 385 Deep seated preferences cannot be argued about-you cannot argue a man mto hking a glass of beer Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr 386 People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others Blaise Pascal 376

j80

387

388 389

ARISTOTLE Anstotle could have avoided the mistake of thmking that women have fewer teeth than men by the simple device of asking Mrs Anstotle to open her mouth Bertrand Russell Aristotle invented SCIence, but destroyed philosophy Alfred North Whitehead Anstotle was famous for knowmg everything He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and IS not involved In the process of thmking ThIS IS true only of certain persons WIll Cuppy ARMOR Armor the kind of clothmg worn by a man whose tailor was a blacksmrth Ambrose Bzerce I rose by sheer milrtary abihty to the rank of corporal Thornton Wzlder I am convinced that the best service a retired general can perform IS to turn In hIS tongue along WIth hIS SUIt and to mothball hIS oprmons General Omar Bradley ARNOlD, MATTHEW Poor Matt he s gone to Heaven no doubt-but he won t like God Robert LoUIS Stevenson hearing of Arnold s death

390

391 392

ARMY

393

22

ARROGANCE ART

394

ARROGANCE Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypo critical hunnhty I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occa sion to change Frank Lloyd Wright ART There IS no such thing as modern art There IS art-and there IS advertismg Albert Sterner What garlrc IS to salad, msamty IS to art Horner Sairu-Gaudens In art I pull no highbrow stuff, I know what I hke, and that s enough W W W oolleott The apples looked like apples, the chairs looked like chairs and It all had nothing to do With anything because If they did not look like apples or chairs or landscape or people they were apples and chairs and landscape and people Gertrude Stem Everybody must like somethmg and I like seeing pam ted pictures
Ibzd
In art, a picture for instance, that told Its own story, With generous assistance from ItS title H H Munro (Saki) That woman's art Jargon tires me she s so fond of talkmg of certain pictures as 'growing on one,' as though they were a sort of fungus Ibid As for borrowing Mr Whistler s Ideas about art, the only thoroughly onginal Ideas I have ever heard him express have had reference to his own supenonty as a painter over pamters greater than him self Oscar Wilde Art reveals Nature's lack of design her cunous crudrties her ab solutely unfinished condinon Nature has good intentions but she callnot carry them out Art IS our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place Ibid The English public takes no Interest In a work of art until It IS told that the work lD question IS Immoral Ibid A really well made buttonhole IS the only lmk between art and nature Ibid There are moments when art attains almost to the digmty of manual labor Ibid There are two ways of dishkmg art one IS to dislike It, the other, to hke It rationally Ibid Art IS a collaboration between God and the artist and the less the artist does the better Andre Gtde All emotion comes to me through the elbow Salvador Dali Compared to Velasquez I am nothing, but compared to contempo rary painters, I am the most big gemus of modern time but modesty 18 not my specialty Ibid

395 396 397 398

399

400 They leaned toward the honest and explicrt 401 402

403

405

406
407 408 409 410

ARTICHOKE ARTIST

23

411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419

A woman IS fascinated not by art but by the noise made by those who are In the art field Anton Chekhov Art and life ought to be hurriedly remarried and brought to hve together Horace Walpole All great art and lrterature IS propaganda George Bernard Shaw My tutor does watercolors they are hke the work of a girl of fourteen when she was twelve Ben Nicholson One reassuring thing about modern art IS that things can't be as bad as they are painted M Walthall Jackson If the old masters had labeled their frurt one wouldn t be so likely to mistake pears for turmps Mark Twazn It IS a gratification to me to know that I am Ignorant of art Ibid Art consists in drawmg the line somewhere G K Chesterton It IS proper to enJoy the cheaper grades of art, but they should not be formally endorsed George Ade ARTICHOKE Within every artichoke IS an acanthus leaf and the acanthus IS what man would have made of the artichoke had God asked him hIS advice Andre Malraux ARTICULATE The more articulate, the less said' IS an old Chinese proverb which I Just made up myself Don Herold ARTIST The artist IS a sort of proofreader blue pencilmg the bad spelling of God H L Mencken Whenever an artist thmks that the commumty does not sufficiently appreciate him he takes an appeal to postenty I wonder where his notion comes from, that posterity IS equipped With superIor Judgment and Wisdom? Heywood Broun An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually cures him self With his art Lee Simonson An artist may VISit a museum but only a pedant can live there George Santayana An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of It John Rusktn No great artist ever sees things as they really are If he did he would cease to be an artist Oscar Wtlde All the really good Ideas I ever had came to me while I was milk mg a cow Grant Wood Immature artists mutate Mature artists steal Lzonel Tnlling If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women In hIS pamtrngs, he would fall over In a dead faint Mrs Pablo Picasso

420

421

422 423

424 425 426 427 428 429 430

24

ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT ASYLUM If your picture IS that of a blonde and the buyer's wife IS a brunette, your picture will run the nsk of staying a long time In your studio Alfred Stevens When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, It IS the most OdlOUS of treasons Aldous Huxley The Arnstic Temperament Chesterton
IS

431 432

433

ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT a disease that afflicts amateurs GK

434

ART OF LIVING The art of Irving IS more hke that of wrestling than of dancing the main thmg IS to stand firm and be ready for an unforeseen attack Marcus Aurelius The ascetic makes a necessity of VIrtue F W Nietzsche The true ascetic counts nothmg hIS own save hIS harp of Flora ASCETIC Joachim

435 436

437 438 439 440 441

ASK People always get what they ask for the only trouble IS that they never know, until they get It, what It actually IS that they have asked for Aldous Huxley The fool wonders, the WIse man asks Berqamm Dtsraelt The Devil made askers Jonathan SWift ASPIRATION The ass went seeking for horns and lost Its ears Arab Proverb The most absurd and reckless asprratrons have sometimes led to extraordinary success Luc de Vauvenargues ASS If one person tell thee thou hast ass's ears, take no notice, should two tell thee so, procure a saddle for yourself Hebrew Proverb It IS one of the incidents of my trade shot ASSASSIN Humbert I of Italy on being ASSERTION George D

412

443

444

A bare assertion IS not necessanly the naked truth Prentice

445

ASSOCIATE When a dove begins to aSSOCIateWith crows, Its feathers remain white but Its heart grows black German Proverb An asylum for the sane would be empty Bernard Shaw
1D

446

America

ASYLUM George

ATHEISM AUSTRALIA

25

447 448 449

ATHEISM Atheism IS the vice of a few intelligent people Voltaire Atheism shows strength of mmd, but only to a certain degree Blaise Pascal The worst moment for the atheist IS when he IS really thankful and has nobody to thank Dante Gabriel Rossetti ATHEIST I am an atheist, thank God' Anonymous An atheist IS a man who has no InVISIble means of support John Buchan An atheist IS a guy who watches a Notre Dame SMU football game and doesn't care who WInS DWight Eisenhower By night an atheist half believes In God Edward Young She was a professional athlete-of the tongue ATHLETE Aldous Huxley

450 451 452 453

y4
455

ATTENTION It IS most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to hIS WIfe In public It always makes people thmk that he beats her when they are alone Oscar Wilde AUCTION Attend no auctions If thou hast no money Talmud I never knew an auctioneer to he, unless It was absolutely necessary Josh Billings It IS only an auctioneer who should admrre all schools of art Oscar Wilde AUDIENCE The best way to SIlence any fnend of yours whom you know to be a fool IS to Induce him to hire a hall Woodrow Wilson I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away Thomas Love Peacock The audience strummed their catarrhs Alexander Woollcott
/'

456 457 458

459 460 461

As cold as an aunt's kISS 463

Anonymous

AUNT

AUSTEN, JANE To me Poe's prose IS unreadable-lIke Jane Austen's No, there IS a difference I would read hIS prose on a salary, but not Jane s Mark Twazn AUSTRALIA Australia IS so kind that, Just tickle her WIth a hoe, and she laughs WIth a harvest Douglas Jerrold

464

26

AUTHOR

465 466 467

468 469 470 471

472
473

474 475
476

477
478

479

480

AUTHOR It IS a good thing when these authors die, for then one gets their works and IS done with them Lord Melbourne I Write fast, because I have not the brains to write slow Georges Stmenon For a dyed In the wool author nothing IS as dead as a book once It IS Written She IS rather like a cat whose kittens have grown up While they were a grOWIng she was passionately interested In them, but now they seem hardly to belong to her-and probably she IS involved With another batch of kittens as I am Involved With other wnting Rumer Godden When audiences come to see us authors lecture It IS largely 1U the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read Sinclair LeWIS If you steal from one author, It s plagiansm, If you steal from many, It's research Wilson Mizner While an author IS yet Irving, we estunate his powers by his worst performance and when he IS dead, we rate them by his best Samuel Johnson No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money Ibid The man who 18 asked by an author what he thinks of hIS work IS put to the torture, and IS not obliged to speak the truth Ibid After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to Write for posterity George Ade It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for wntmg, but I couldn t gIVeIt up because by that time I was too famous Robert Benchley The author who speaks about hrs own books IS almost as bad as the mother who talks about her own children Beruamin Disraelt Sometimes I thmk It sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewnter runmng Gene Fowler If you have one strong Idea you can't help repeating It and embroidenng It Sometimes I think that authors should write one novel and then be put in a gas chamber John P Marquand Mr Moto was my literary disgrace I wrote about him to get shoes for the baby Ibid What has influenced my life more than any other smgle thing has been my stammer Had I not stammered I would probably have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature W Somerset Maugham One of the amusements of being old IS that I have no IllUSIOns about my hterary posmon I have been taken very seriously, but I have also seen essays by clever young men on contemporary fienon who would never think of considenng me I no longer mind what people think On the whole, I have done what I set out to

AUTHOR

27

481 482 483

484

)85
486 487

488 489 490

491

492 493 494 495 496 497

do Now my age makes everyone take me very seriously If you are a wnter, lrve a long time I have found that longevity counts more than talent Ibid Only a mediocre writer IS always at hIS best lbtd Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child SkIpS rope, the way a mouse waltzes E B White A brg he IS more plausible than truth People who wnte flction, tf they had not taken It Up might have become very successful hars Ernest Hemingway When I had got my notes all wntten out, I thought that I'd polish It off m two summers and It took me twenty seven years Arnold Toynbee He doesn't know what he means, and he doesn't know he doesn't know F R Leavts WIth SIxty staring me In the face I have developed mflammanon of the sentence structure and a definite bardenmg of the paragraphs James Thurber It CIrculated for five years, through the halls of fifteen pubhshers and finally ended up WIth Vanguard Press which, as you can see IS rather deep into the alphabet Patnck Dennis Wntmg Isn't hard, no harder than ditchdiggmg Ibid I specialize m murders of quiet domestic interest GIve me a nice deadly phial to play WIth and I am happy Agatha Chrtsue Everythmg goes by the board honor pnde, decency to get the book wntten If a writer has to rob hIS mother he WIll not hesitate the Ode to a Grecian Urn IS worth any number of old ladles Wtlltam Faulkner The wnter In America isn t part of the culture of this country He IS hke a fine dog People hke him around but he s of no use The artist IS still a little like the old court Jester He's supposed to speak hIS VICIOUS paradoxes WIth some sense In them, but he isn t part of whatever the fabric IS that makes a nanon Ibid A wnter IS congenitally unable to tell the truth and that IS why we call what he wntes ficnon Ibid I'm a Hollywood writer so I put on a sports Jacket and take off my brain Ben Hecht No author ever spared a brother, WItS are gamecocks to one another John Gay An author IS a fool who not content WIth having bored those who have hved WIth him IDSISts on bonng future generations Baron de Montesquteu It IS a mean thief, or a successful author that plunders the dead Austin 0 Malley The Great Author of All made everything out of nothmg, but many

28

AUTHOR

498 499 500 501

George D a human author makes nothing out of everything Prentice A pm has as much head as some authors, and good deal more point
Ibid

502 503

504 505 506 507

508 509 510 511

512

You must not suppose because I am a man of letters that I never tried to earn an honest Irving George Bernard Shaw He was an author whose works were so httle known as to be almost confidential Stanley Walker Oliver Herford once dropped a remark In a httle group of wnters who were telling how much trouble they took with their work One said he sometimes took weeks working over a smgle chapter another said ' That s nothing I sometimes spend days struggling with a single paragraph' And I said Oliver In his faraway voice frequently spend months polishmg a SIngle word" Curtis Brown The conversation of authors IS not so good as might be imagined but, such as It IS It IS better than any other William Hazlitt A good many young wnters make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self addressed envelope big enough for the manuscript to come back in ThIS IS too much of a temptation to the edrtor Ring Lardner In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write, but evidently can't read If they could read their stuff, they'd stop wntmg Wzll Rogers In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written you have no Idea what VIgor It WIll give your style Sydney Smzth In America only the successful writer IS Important, In France all wnters are Important, m England no writer IS Important, and In Australia you have to explain what a writer IS Geoffrey Cottrell I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors because they have a sad habrt of dying off Chaucer IS dead Spencer IS dead so IS MIlton so IS Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself Mark Twazn I never saw an author 10 my life, sav10g perhaps one, that did not purr as audibly as a full grown domestic cat on having hIS fur smoothed the nght way by a skillful hand OZzver Wendell Holmes ,'An Incurable Itch for scnbblmg takes possessIon)Of many, and <grows Inveterate In their msane breasts Juvenal Publishers look upon authors SImply as a butcher looks upon Southdown mutton, WIth merely an eye to the number of pounds to be got out of them Douglas Jerrold No author IS a man of gemus to hIS publisher Hetnrtch Hezne The actual deflmtion of revrewmanship IS now, I thmk, stabilized In ItS shortest form It IS 'How to be one up on the author WIthout actually tampering WIth the text In other words, how, as a entre,

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BACHELOR

29

513

to show that It IS really you yourself who should have wntten the book If you had had the time and SInce you hadn't you are glad that someone else has, although obviously It might have been done better Stephen Potter I write at high speed because boredom IS bad for my health It upsets my stomach more than anything else I also avoid green vegetables They re grossly overrated Noel Coward Most autobtographies are written by corpses AUTOBIOGRAPHY S N Behrman

514 515

AUTOMATION If It keeps up, man will atrophy all hIS hmbs but the push button finger Frank Lloyd Wright AUTOMOBILE What a lucky thing the wheel was invented before the automobile otherwise, can you imagine the awful screeching? Samuel Hoffenstem AVIATION What can you conceive more SIlly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking hIS brams and studying night and day how to fly Wilham Law

516

517

•••
518 519 520 521 522 523 524 52}

...

BABY A baby IS an angel whose wmgs decrease as hIS legs increase French Proverb Famihes WIth babies and famihes WIthout babies are sorry for each other Edgar W Howe A SOIled baby WIth a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously re garded as a thmg of beauty Mark Twazn Here we have a baby It IS composed of a bald head and a parr of lungs Eugene Field The worst feature of a new baby IS Its mother's smgmg Frank McKznney Hubbard About the only thmg we have left that actually discnmmates 10 favor 0' the plam people IS the stork Ibid A perfect example of mmonty rule IS a baby 10 the house Milwaukee Journal The art of being a parent IS to sleep when the baby Isn't lookmg Anonymous BACHELOR What a pity It IS that nobody knows how to manage a wile but / a bachelor George Colman

526

30

BAD BANKER

A single man has not nearly the value he would have In a state of umon He IS an Incomplete animal He resembles the odd half of ,/ a pair of scissors Berqamin Franklin 528 A bachelor never quite gets over the Idea that he IS a thing of , " beauty and a boy forever Helen Rowland ;529 He who hesitates IS Iost=-except a bachelor Herbert V Prochnow 530 A bachelor IS a souvemr of some woman who found a better one at the last minute Unknown 531 A bachelor IS one who enJoys the chase but does not eat the game Anonymous 532 All reformers are bachelors George Moore 533 The happy married man dies In good style at home, surrounded by his weepIng wife and children The old bachelor don t die at allhe sort of rots away, like a pollywog stall C F Browne (Artemus Ward) 534 By persistently remammg single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation Oscar Wilde 535 Nowadays all the marned men hve like bachelors, and all the bachelors hve like marned men I bid 536 Bachelors know more about women than married men If they didn't they'd be married too H L Mencken 537 Bachelors are providential beings God created them for the con,/ solation of WIdows and the hope of maids J De Ftnod 538 I should like to know what IS the proper function of women, If It IS not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out George Eliot 539 A bachelor IS one who thinks one can live as cheap as two Eleanor S J Ridley 540 541 542 BAD A bad man IS the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman H L Mencken A bad man IS the sort of man who admires innocence, and a bad woman IS the sort of woman a man never gets trred of Oscar Wzlde I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best Walt Whitman BALD Better a bald head than none at all A usttn 0 Malley There IS one thing about baldness-c-it's neat Don Herold Bemg bald has Its good points If you have no hair at all on your head, there IS no temptation to part It In the middle Herbert V Prochnow BANKER A banker IS a fellow who lends hIS umbrella when the sun IS shinmg and wants It back the mmute It begins to ram Mark Twazn

527

143

545

546

BARGAIN BEAUTIFUL

31

547 548

Why can t some yes-men be bank cashiers? Herbert V Prochnow A banker IS a person who IS willmg to make a loan If you present sufficient evidence to show you don't need It Ibid BARGAIN It makes no difference what It IS, a woman will buy anything she thmks a store IS Iosmg money on Frank McKznney Hubbard One of the difficult tasks m this world IS to convince a woman that even a bargain costs money Edgar W Howe There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant Anatole France Bargain somethmg you can't use at a price you can't resist Franklin P Jones One dog barks at something the rest bark at him BARK Chinese Proverb

549 550 551 552

553 554 555

BASEBALL The artist who says there IS no beauty in straight lines never has seen a white sphere descnbing one Just over second base Anonymous Baseball has the great advantage over Cricket of being sooner ended George Bernard Shaw If you are bashful, you 11 have no clnldren BASHFULNESS Jewzsh Proverb BASKET Mark Twazn

556 557 558 ". 560

Put all your eggs m one basket, and watch the basket

5f09

BATH The father of liars took the first cold shower Anonymous When you take a bath you are crvihzed when you don t take a bath, you are cultured Lin Yutang If the father of our country George Washington was Tutankhamened tomorrow and, after being aroused from his tomb, was told that the American people today spend two billion dollars yearly on bathmg material, he would say, What got 'em so dirty?" Will Rogers You can do anythmg With bayonets except Sit on them Cavour BAYONETS Count dt

561 /

1<;2

BEAUTIFUL A beautiful woman can get almost anything except your point of Anonymous 563/ She IS a woman so beautiful that to expect sense from her would be hoggish Wzllzam II oj Germany

pew

32 look stupid Hedy Lamarr

BEAUTY BED

564 Any girl can be glamorous All you have to do IS stand still and 565 The only beautiful things are the thmgs that do not concern us
Oscar Wilde

566 It IS better to be beautiful than to be good, but It IS better to be

good than to be ugly Ibid BEAUTY

567 I denve no pleasure from talking with a young woman half an hour
simply because she has regular features haven t any sense Herbert Spencer Frank McKznney Henry D Thoreau Hubbard

568 Beauty IS only skin deep, but It s a valuable asset If you're poor and 569 The saymg that beauty IS but skin deep IS but a skin deep sayIng 570 Beauty IS all very well at sight, but who can look at It when It has
been in the house three days? George Bernard Shaw

571 Now and then one sees an absentminded young thing hurrying to the
572

573 574
575

576

577

578

.)"9

office who IS healthy on only one Side of her face Anonymous She IS a peacock In everything but beauty Oscar Wzlde My only books Were women s looks And folly s all they ve taught me Thomas Moore A thing of beauty IS a great expense Herbert V Prochnow Her features did not seem to know the value of teamwork George Ade Nycilla dyes her locks, 'tis said, But 'tis a foul aspersion, She buys them black, they therefore need No subsequent immersron Luctltus Of two evils choose the prettier Carolyn Wells Beauty the power by which a woman charms a lover and ternfies a husband Ambrose Bierce To marry a woman for her beauty IS hke buying a house for ItS paint Anonymous
0

580 Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve

Samuel Johnson

BED clock IS a scoundrel

In

bed m the morning Ibid 582 My bedfellows are cough and cramp, we sleep three m a bed Charles Lamb 583 For recnntmg the spmts there IS nothing hke lying a good while In bed Lord Melbourne 584 There IS a proverb, As you have made your bed, so you must he

581 The happiest part of a man's hfe IS what he passes lymg awake

BEERBOHM, MAX BELIEF

33

585 586

in It ' which IS simply a he If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God I will make It again G K Chesterton It IS amazmg how few people are COnsCIOUSf the Importance of o the art of lying in bed Lin Yutang I rise from bed the first thing In the mornmg not because I am dissatisfied WIth It but because I cannot carry It WIth me during the day Edgar Wilson Nye The gods bestowed on Max the Wzlde
gift

587

BEERBOHM, MAX of perpetual old age Oscar

588 589 590 591

BEES The bees got their government system settled milhons of years ago but the human race IS still gropmg Don Marquis Bees are not as busy as we think they are They Just can't buzz any slower Frank McKznney Hubbard No good sensible working bee listens to the advice of a bedbug on the subject of business Elbert Hubbard Scientists say the bee language IS a kind of dance performed WIth their feet As we recall the only bees that ever tried to communi cate with us have sat out the dances Arkansas Gazette BEGGING As for begging It IS safer to beg than to take, but It IS finer to take than to beg Oscar Wilde Beggars should be abolished It annoys one to grve to them and It annoys one not to gtve to them F W Nietzsche BEHAVIOR The reason the way of the transgressor IS hard IS because It s so crowded Frank McKznney Hubbard I don't say we all ought to misbehave but we ought to look as If we could Orson Welles BELIEF The way Shaw believes In himself IS very refreshing m these atheistrc days when so many believe In DO God at all Israel Zangwtll The path of sound credence IS through the thick forest of skepticism George Jean Nathan We believe nothing so firmly as what we least know Michel de Montaigne I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stones Washzngton Irving I have never discarded beliefs deliberately I left them in the drawer, and, after a while when I opened It, there was nothing there at all William Graham Sumner

592 593

594

stJ5

596 597 598 599 600

34

BELIEVE BET

601

It hurts more to have a belief pulled than to have a tooth pulled, and no mtellectual Novocam IS available Elmer DaVIS

BELIEVE We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us George Eliot 603 The people would not believe m God at all If they were not per nutted to believe wrong m HIm Lord Hall/ax 604 If you must tell me your opmions, tell me what you believe m I have plenty of doubts of my own Johann von Goethe 605 'One can't believe impossible things 'I daresay you haven thad much practice," said the Queen When I was your age I always did It for half an hour a day Why, sometimes I've believed as many as SIX impossible things before breakfast" LeWIS Carroll 606 The most costly of all follies IS to believe passionately m the palpably not true It IS the chief occupation of mankind H L Mencken 607 A man can believe a considerable deal of rubbrsh and yet go about hIS dally work 1D a rational and cheerful manner Norman Douglas 608 'You say you believe," said Count de X, an extreme Catholic to the good Protestant munster 'You people believe, but we know" Andre Gtde 602 609 BELOW He who thmks hIS place below rum WIll certainly be below hIS place Lord Halifax BENEFACTOR Most benefactors are like those inept generals who take the CIty and spare the CItadel NIcolas Chamfort A benefactor always has somethmg of a creditor about him Friedrzch Hebbel A man recervmg chanty practically always hates hIS benefactor-It IS a fixed charactenstic of human nature George Orwell

610 611 6U

BENEVOLENT Man IS certainly a benevolent animal A never sees B 10 distress without thinking C ought to relieve hrm directly Sydney Smith 614 Good dinners have been the greatest vehicles of benevolence since / man began to eat William M Thackeray ~61~ When a man has been highly honored and has eaten a httle, he IS V most benevolent F W Nietzsche 613 616 I have the SImplest tastes I am always satisfied WIth the best Wzlde The bettmg man's IS a dedicated lrfe Robert Lynd BEST Oscar BET

617

BIBLE BIOGRAPHY

35

618

It may be that the race IS not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong-but that IS the way to bet Damon Runyon BIBLE The Book of LIfe begins with a man and a woman in a garden, and It ends WIth Revelations Oscar Wilde Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand the passages that bother me are those I do understand Mark Twain That kind of so called housekeeping where they have SIXBIbles and no corkscrew Ibid There are more dusty BIbles than dusty books of pornography RUSSian Proverb The BIble may be the truth but It IS not the whole truth and nothing but the truth Samuel Butler Almost any fool can prove that the BIble ain't so-c-rt takes a WIse man to believe It Josh Btlltngs The BIble must be a great book to survive all the translations that are made of It Anonymous BIgamy IS having one WIfe too many Oscar Wilde Monogamy
IS

619 620 621 622 623 624 625

626

BIGAMY the same

627 628 629 630

BIGOT A bigot delights In pubhc ndicule for he begins to thmk he IS a martyr Sydney Smith BIgot one who IS obstmately and zealously attached to an OpInIOn that you do not entertain Ambrose Bierce WIsdom never has made a bigot but learnmg has Josh Btllings The people who are most bigoted are the people who have no convicnons at all G K Chesterton To play btlhards Spencer well IS a sIgn of an Ill-spent youth BILLIARDS Herbert

631

632 633 634 635 636

BIography IS a region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary and on the west by tedium Phllzp Guedalla Every great man nowadays has hIS disciples, and It IS always Judas who wntes the biography Oscar Wtlde BIography IS one of the new terrors of death John Arbuthnot When you read a biography, remember that the truth IS never fit for pubhcanon George Bernard Shaw Just how dtfficult It IS to wnte biographv can be reckoned bv anv-

BIOGRAPHY

36

BIPARTISAN BLESSINGS body who sits down and considers Just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs Rebecca West

BIPARTISAN 637 Whenever a fellow tells me he's brpartisan, I know he s gomg to vote against me Harry S Truman BIRD Magpie a bird whose thievish disposrtion suggested to someone that It might be taught to talk Ambrose Bierce 639 If birds knew how poor they are, they wouldn't smg so sweetly Danisb Proverb 640 I am free to admit that I am the kind of man who would never notice an onole building a nest unless It came and built It m my hat In the hat room of the club Stephen Leacock 641 Protect the birds The dove brings peace and the stork brings tax exemptions Birmingham News 638 642 BIRTHDAY Some weddings are supposed to be quiet affairs but the only really quiet affair In the home IS dad s birthday Milwaukee Journal BIRTHMARK I often see children With strawberry marks whose mothers say that they desired strawbernes before their birth I am waitmg to see a baby marked With a pearl necklace Anatole France BISHOP The most solemn and terrible duty of a bishop IS the entertainment of the clergy Sydney Smith The bishop IS In the nature of an ecclesiastical sherIff Chief Justice North A bishop keeps on sayIng at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful Oscar Wilde Blame
IS

643

644 645 646

647 648

the lazy man's wages

Damsh Proverb

BLAME

BLESSINGS If you don t get everythmg you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want Oscar Wilde 649 God bless me and my son John, Me and my Wife, him and his WIfe, Us four, and no more Anonymous 650 Every misery I mISS IS a new blessing Izaak Walton 651 I am a confirmed believer In blessmgs In disguise I prefer them undisguised when I myself happen to be the person blessed, 10 fact I can scarcely recognize a blessing 10 disguise except when It IS bestowed upon someone else Robert Lynd

BLINDNESS BOOKS

37

652 653 654

BLINDNESS In the country of the blind the one eyed man IS king Erasmus As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagme that you can see It from his back Georg C Lichtenberg A blmd man leanmg against a wall sard ThIS IS the end of the world" Greek Proverb BLOCKHEAD The bookful blockhead, Ignorantly read, WIth loads of learned lumber 10 his head Alexander Pope A blockhead rubs his thoughtless skull, And thanks his stars he was not born a fool Ibzd BLOOD The best blood will at some time get mto a fool or a mosquito Austin 0 Malley BLUNDER A clever man commits no mmor blunders Iohann von Goethe Most men had rather be charged With malice than With making a blunder Josh Btlltngs A blunder at the right moment IS better than cleverness at the wrong time Carolyn Wells We usually call our blunders mistakes, and our friends style our mistakes blunders Henry Berqamin Wheatley BLUSHING Man IS the only animal that blushes Or needs to Mark Twazn The girl who blushes needs no makeup RUSSian Proverb BOHEMIAN The so called Bohemian group, m my opimon, IS a bunch of amateurs teaching amateurs to be amateurs Charles Coburn A Bohemian IS an educated hoss thief C F Browne (Artemus Ward) Bohemians are people who SIt on the floor and drink black coffee when all the while there are chairs and cream In the room Beatrice Lillie I never read a book before Sydney Smith reviewing It BOOK REVIEWING It prejudices one so'

655 656

657

658 659 660 661

662 ~ 664 665 666

667

668

669 670

BOOKS Books are fatal they are the curse of the human race Nine tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refuta tion of that nonsense The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of pnntIng Benqamtn Dtsraeli When I want to read a book I wnte one lbtd Many thanks, I shall lose no time In reading your book Ibid

38

BOOKS
IS to wnte a book about It Ibid Idle books get born because people don't attend to their proper business, but leap at the chance to divert themselves from It Michel de Montatgne I hate books, for they only teach people to talk about what they do not understand Jean Jacques Rousseau He who has books IS happy, he who does not need any IS happier Chinese Proverb What vanety, what refreshment and what Interests would be found In books If authors wrote only what they thought I Luc de Vauv enargues There are no bad books, any more than there are ugly women Ana tole France The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads Ibid As I was laying on the green, A small English book I seen Carlyle's Essay on Burns was the edition So I left It laying 10 the same position Anonymous Sartor Resartus IS simply unreadable, and for me that always sort of spoils a book Will Cuppy When I am dead I hope It may be said HIS SInS were scarlet, but hIS books were read' Hilaire Belloc Many books reqUIre no thought from those who read them and for a very SImple reason-they made no such demand upon those who wrote them Charles C Colton There are books of WhIChthe backs and covers are by far the best parts Charles Dickens 'Pray, SIr," said Mr Hume In what branch of philosophy did you employ your researches? What books did you read? 'Books?" said Mr WhIte "Nay SIr, I read no books, but I used to SIt whole fore noons a yawrung and pokmg the fire" Sir David Dalrymple For people who like that kind of a book-that IS the kind of book they WIll like Abraham Lincoln Books serve to show a man that those ongmal thoughts of his aren't very new after all Ibid

671 The best way to become acquainted with a subject 672 673 674
675 676 677 678

679 680 681

682
683

684
685 686 687

What IS the use of a book," thought Allee, conversatrons?" LeWIS Carroll

WIthout pictures or

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that penod would need a pen far less bnlhant than mme Max Beerbohm 688 Unprovided WIth onginal Iearnmg, unfound 1D the habits of thinking, unskilled 1U the arts of composition, I resolved-to wnte a book Edward Gibbon

BOOKS

39

689 690

691 692 693

694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702

703

704

Reading IS thmking WIth a strange head instead of one's own Arthur Schopenhauer Hard covered books break up friendships You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn t return It you get mad at him It makes you mean and petty But twenty five cent books are different John Steznbeck From the moment I picked your book up until I lard It down I was convulsed wrth laughter Someday I intend reading It Groucho Marx It was a book to kill time for those who hke It better dead Rose Macaulay It really deserves the praise, whatever that praise may be worth of being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong SIde of the question of which he was profoundly ignorant Thomas Babtngton Macaulay I fell asleep reading a dull book and I dreamed that I was reading on, so I awoke from sheer boredom Hemnch Heine Everythmg comes to him who waits except a loaned book Frank McKznney Hubbard The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world ItS own shame Oscar Wzlde There IS no such thing as a moral or an Immoral book Books are well wntten or badly written That IS all Ibid The best time for planning a book IS while you re domg the dishes Agatha Christie You should read It, though there IS much that IS skip worthy Earl of Oxford and Asquith A best seller IS the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent Logan Pearsall Smith For several days after my first book was published I earned It about in my pocket, and took surreptmous peeps at It to make sure the mk had not faded Sir James M Barne Wntmg a book IS an adventure To begm WIth, It IS a toy and an amusement Then It becomes a mistress, then It becomes a master, then It becomes a tyrant The last phase IS that Just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fung him to the public Sir Winston Churchill You need not expect to get your book right the first time Go to work and revamp or rewnte It God only exhibits hIS thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention These are God s adjectives You thunder and hghtnmg too much, the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by Mark Twazn ThIS book has had the effect WhICh good books usually have It has made the fools more foohsh, the mtelhgent more mtelhgent, and left the majority as they were Georg C Lichtenberg

40

BORE

705 Queerer thmgs than books, surely, It would be hard to find m the

706 707 708 709 710

711

712
713

world Printed by people who do not understand them, sold by people who do not understand them, bound reviewed and read by people who do not understand them and nowadays even written by people who do not understand them Ibid If my books didn t sell, I think I d be a bear trainer I like to wrestle WIth bears Ernest Hemingway In the mam there are two sorts of books those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read H L Menchen The chief knowledge that a man gets from reading books IS the knowledge that very few of them are worth reading Ibid No furniture IS so charmmg as books, even If you never open them or read a single word Sydney Smith The multitude of books IS making us Ignorant Voltaire Some men borrow books some men steal books, and others beg presentation coptes from the author James Jeffrey Roche Borrowers of books-those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes Charles Lamb There are books that are at once excellent and bormg Those that at once leap to the mmd are Thoreau's Walden Emerson's Essays George Ehot s Adam Bede and Landor s Dialogues W Somerset Maugham BORE Bore a person who talks when you WIsh him to listen Ambrose Bierce There IS no bore like a clever bore Samuel Butler Many bores are so obviously happy that It IS a pleasure to watch them Robert Lynd We often forgrve those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore Francois de La Rochefoucauld He has returned from Italy a greater bore than ever, he bores on architecture, paintmg, statuary and mUSIC Sydney Smith SOCIety IS now one polished horde Formed of two mighty tnbes, the bores and bored Lord Byron He says a thousand pleasant thmgs-but never says' Adieu " John Godfrey Saxe It reqUIres no small talent to be a decided bore Sir Walter Scott A bore IS one who, when you ask him How are you?', tells you Anonymous If you are a bore strrve to be a rascal also so that you may not discredit VIrtue George Bernard Shaw People always get bred of one another I grow tired of myself whenever I am left alone for ten minutes, and I am certain that I am fonder of myself than anyone can be of another person Ibid

714 715

716
717 718 719

720

7']{('
723 724

721

BOREDOM BOSTON

41

725 726 727 128 729 730 731 732 733 734

Bore a man who IS never unmtennonally rude Oscar Wilde One should never take sides In anythmg Taking sides IS the beginnmg of smcenty and earnestness follows shortly afterward, and the human being becomes a bore Ibid A bore IS a fellow who opens his mouth and puts his feats in It Henry Ford 'Bore a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company Gtan Vzncenzo Gravina Bore one who makes others take the world senously Lord Vanslttart Bore a guy who wraps up a two-minute Idea In a two hour vocabulary Walter Wtnchell The secret of boring 1S the practice of saymg everything Voltaire It IS a tolerable depiction of a bore that he IS one who talks about himself when you want to talk about yourself Robert Hugh Benson How soft, how snug, how warm, how comfortable-and how bored you are! Anton Chekhov 0 wad some power the giftie gte us to see some people before they see us Ethel Watts Mumford BOREDOM We are always bored by those whom we bore Francois de La Rochefoucauld One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience Logan Pearsall Smith Any subject can be made mterestmg and therefore any subject can be made bonng Hilaire Belloc BORN It IS best never to have been born But who among us has such luck? One In a milhon, perhaps Alfred Polgar BORROW The man who never lends money never has many friends He doesn't need them Anonymous To borrow money, big money, you have to wear your clothes In a certain way, walk in a certain way, and have about you an arr of solemnity and majeary=-somethmg like the atmosphere of a GOthIC cathedral Stephen Leacock Let us all be happy and lrve within our means, even If we have to borrow the money to do It WIth C F Browne (Artemus Ward) BOSTON The town of the cries and groans, Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschmks, And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns Franklin P Adams Boston IS a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying :first pnnciples to tnfies George Santayana

735 736 737

738

739 740

741

742 743

42
744 745 746 747 748

BOY BRAIN

We say the cows laid out Boston Well, there are worse surveyors Ralph Waldo Emerson If you hear an owl hoot To whom Instead of To who, ' you can make up your mind he was born and educated In Boston Anon ymous A Boston man IS the East wind made flesh Thomas G Appleton

BOY A boy IS, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage Plato One of the best thmgs In the world to be IS a boy, It reqUIres no experience, but needs some practice to be a good one Charles Dudley Warner 749 Every time a boy shows his hands, someone suggests that he wash them Edgar W Howe 750 There IS nothmg so aggravating as a fresh boy who IS too old to Ignore and too young to kick Frank McKznney Hubbard Ibid 751 Boys Will be bOYS,and so Will a lot of middle aged men 752 The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all IS evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men A mbrose Bierce 753 Nobody IS as sophisticated as a boy of nmeteen who IS Just recovering from a baby-grand passion Helen Rowland 754 A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think he does, and about two years after he thinks he does General LeWIS B Hershey Sir Winston Churchill 755 I was what people called "a troublesome boy' 756 The parent who could see hIS boy as he really IS would shake hIS head and say, "WIllie IS no good 111 sell him " Stephen Leacock 757 One boy IS more trouble than a dozen girls English Proverb 758 A boy IS an appetite With a skin pulled over It Anonymous BRAG 75!J Th' feller that brags 'bout how cheap he heats his home allus sees th first robin Frank McKznney Hubbard 760 761 BRAIN Agamemnon has not so much bram as earwax William Shakespeare The brain IS a wonderful organ, It starts working the moment you get up In the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office Robert Frost 762 All my life, as down an abyss Without a bottom I have been pouring vanloads of information into that vacancy of oblrvion I call my mmd Logan Pearsall Smith 763 The brain IS a part of the human mechanism that begins to function at birth and stops when ItS owner gets up to make an Impromptu speech Anonymous 764 Give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself Robert LoUIS Stevenson

BRANDY BRIEF

'43

765 766

BRANDY A mixture of brandy and water spoils two good things Charles Lamb Claret IS the liquor for boys port for men, but he who aspIres to be a hero must drink brandy Samuel Johnson Bravery has no place where Bravery a cheap and vulgar are frequently found In the It IS easy to be brave from BRAVERY It can avail nothing Samuel Johnson quality of which the brightest Instances lowest savages Paul Chatfield a safe distance Aesop

767 768 '769 770 771 772 773

774

BREAKFAST Only dull people are bnlhant at breakfast Oscar Wilde I thmk breakfast so pleasant because no one IS conceited before one o'clock Sydney Smith All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast John Gunther A man should sleep sometime between lunch and dinner in order to be at his best when he Joms his WIfe and friends at dmner My WIfe and I tned two or three times m the last forty years to have breakfast together, but It was so disagreeable we had to stop Sir Winston Churchill Never work before breakfast, If you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first Josh Billings

BREEDING Good breedmg IS an expedient to make fools and WIse men equals Sir RIchard Steele 776.","The test of a man or woman's breeding IS how they behave in a quarrel George Bernard Shaw 777 IGood breeding consists m concealing how much we think of ourselves and how lrttle we think of the other person Mark Twazn 775 778 The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle Lincoln BRIBE Abraham

779

BRIDGE I say banish bndge, let's find some pleasanter way of bemg miserable together Don Herold BRIEF Every time I read where some woman gave a short talk I wonder how she stopped Frank McKznney Hubbard To be brief IS almost a condition of bemg inspired George Santayana Not that the story need be long, but It Will take a long while to make It short Henry D Thoreau

780 781 782

44 783

BRITISH BUREAUCRACY The ordmary Bntrsher imagines God IS an Englishman Bernard Shaw Broadway Amenca's hardened artery In the midst of hfe we are In Brooklyn Mark Kelly BROOKLYN Oliver Herford BRITISH George

BROADWAY 784 785 786 787 788

BROTHER Th' feller that calls you 'brother' generally wants something that don't belong to him Frank McKmney Hubbard Even brothers keep careful accounts Chinese Proverb BROTHERHOOD In all my travels the thing that has Impressed me the most IS the universal brotherhood of man-what there IS of It Mark Twain BROTHER IN LAW No man was ever so low as to have respect for hIS brother In law Fmley Peter Dunne BUDGET money's

789 '"
790

It's a tembly hard Job to spend a billron dollars and get your worth George Humphrey 791 Those who work out our federal budget Have a pohcy-really a honeyWe shall hve on our national income, Even If we must borrow the money' Leverett Lyon 792 Budget a mathematical confirmation of your suspicrons Latimer 793 In national affairs a million IS only a drop 10 the budget Rascoe 794 My sympathy often goes out for the humble decimal point a pathetic and hectic life wandering around among regimented trying to find some of the old places he used to know when were balanced Herbert Hoover 795 796 Building IS a sweet impovenshmg George Herbert BUIld and borrow, A sackful of sorrow German Proverb We all have strength to bear our neighbor's burden Rochejoucauld

Burton He has Ciphers budgets

BUILDING

797

Francois de La

BURDEN

798

BUREAUCRACY The proposal IS frequently made that the government ought to assume the risks that are 'too great for pnvate Industry" ThIS means that

BUSINESS

45

799

bureaucrats should be permitted to take risks with the taxpayers' money that no one IS willing to take with hIS own Henry Hazlut Bureaucracy IS a giant mechanism operated by pygmies Honore de Balzac BUSINESS The playthings of our elders are called business St Augustine The nature of business IS swmdlmg August Bebel To open a shop IS easy, the difficult thing ISkeeping It open Chinese Proverb He who does not accept cash when offered IS no businessman Ibid The ancient Hebrews had a goat on which all the SInS were placed, so the holdmg company Idea isn t new Anonymous When two men In a business always agree one of them ISunnecessary William Wrigley Ir Busmess IS so much lower a thing than learning that a man used to the last cannot easily brmg hIS stomach down to the first Lord Halifax The greatest part of the bus mess of the world IS the effect of not thmkmg Ibid All you have to do In business IS to stand and watch the world go by, and It certainly WIll Herbert V Prochnow Almost any day now we expect a tired businessman to tell hIS WIfe he was late for dinner because hIS plane was delayed one half hour In London Ibid It IS not by any means certain that a man s business IS the most Important thing he has to do Robert LoUIS Stevenson There IS much more hope for humamty from manufacturers who enjoy their work than from those who continue In Irksome business WIth the object of founding hospitals Alfred North Whitehead Half the time when men thmk they are talking business, they are wasting nme Edgar W Howe Business? That s very SImple It'S other people s money Alexandre Dumas fils There are two times In a man s hfe when he should not speculate when he can't afford It and when he can Mark Twazn Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure business William Wycherley Business WIll be erther better or worse Calvin Coolidge All busmess sagacity reduces Itself in the last analysts to a JUdICIOUS use of sabotage Thorstein Veblen It IS very vulgar to talk about one's own business Only people hke stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner partres Oscar Wilde My own business always bores me to death I prefer other people's Ibid

800 801 802 803 804 805 806 807 808 809 810 811 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819

46

BUSY CABBAGE

820 821 822

823 824 825 826 827

Of all the damnable waste of human hfe that ever was mvented, clerking IS the very worst George Bernard Shaw BUSInessIS a combination of war and sport Andre Maurots The market IS the place set apart where men may deceive each other Anacharns BUSY A busy fool IS fitter to be shut up than a downnght madman Lord Halzfax The hardest Job of all IS trying to look busy when you're not William Feather As peace IS the end of war, so to be Idle IS the ultimate purpose of the busy Samuel Johnson Busy souls have no nme to be busybodies Austin 0 Malley The veriest nobodies are the greatest busybodies cote All would be well If there were no buts BUSYBODY Benjamin WhichBUT BUTLER PG BUITER Yiddish BUITERFLY

828 829

German Proverb

The butler entered the room, a solemn proceSSIon of one Wodehouse He who has butter on hIS bread should not go into the sun Proverb And what's a butterfly? At best, He's but a caterpillar, drest John Gay

830

831

832 833 834 835 836

When you go to buy use your eyes, not your ears Czech Proverb Not to be covetous IS money 10 your purse, not to be eager to buy IS Income CIcero Never buy a thing you don't want merely because It IS dear Oscar Wzlde Don't a fellow feel good after he gets out of a store where he nearly bought something? Frank McKznney Hubbard People will buy anythmg that's one to a customer Sinclair Lewis

BUY

•••
837

c ...

CABBAGE Cabbage a familiar kitchen garden vegetable about as large and WIse as a man's head Ambrose BIerce

CAESAR CANDOR

41

838 839

CAESAR Caesar was a failure Otherwise he would not have been assassinated Napoleon [ I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men, and his aversion to lean ones David Hume CALAMITY A calamity that affects everyone IS only half a calamity Italian Proverb Calamities are of two kinds misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others Ambrose Bierce CALENDAR Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our hves by reminding us that each day that passes IS the anmversary of some perfectly uninteresting event Oscar Wilde CALIFORNIA Cahforma IS a fine place to live In-If you happen to be an orange Fred Allen The Cahforma climate makes the sick well and the well sick, the old young and the young old Hollywood Proverb CAllOUS Gifted with great fortitude to bear the evils affhcnng another Ambrose Bierce Nothing
IS

840 841

842

843 844

845

846 847

so aggravatmg as calmness

Oscar Wilde

CALMNESS

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump him from being a camel G K Chesterton

CAMEL you may be freeing

848 849

CANDID There but for the grace of God goes God Str Wmston Churchill, speaking of Sir Stafford Cripps Whenever one has anythmg unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid Oscar Wzlde CANDIDATE The election Isn't very far off when a candidate can recogDlze you across the street Frank McKznney Hubbard A candidate has a hard lIfe-he has to shave twice a day Adlai Stevenson Few candidates possess a love for the common people that can survive either defeat or election West Palm Beach Post CANDOR The young man turned to him WIth a disarmmg candor which instantly put him on his guard H H Munro (Saki)

850 851 852

853

48

CANNON CAUSE On an occasion of this kind It becomes more than a moral duty to speak one S mmd It becomes a pleasure Oscar Wilde Cannon an instrument employed boundaries Ambrose Bierce
In

854

855

the rectification

CANNON of national CAPITAL Mark Twazn

856 857

Spending one's capital IS feeding a dog on hIS own tall

CAPRICE The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion IS that the caprIce lasts a httle longer Oscar Wzlde One should always play fairly when one has the wmnmg cards CARDS Ibid

858 859

CARD TABLE No man who has wrestled with a self-adjustmg card table can ever be quite the man he once was James Thurber An artist's career always begins tomorrow CAREER James Mctaeill Whistler CARICATURE Oscar Wilde

860 861 862 863

Caricature IS the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius In God we trust all others must pay cash

CASH Amerzcan Saying

864 865 866 867

CAT When you command a dog to SIt up, ' the poor IdIOt thinks he has to do It The average cat throws off pretends to be stupid and not to understand what you want He really understands you too well, but he sees "nothmg In It" for him Why Sit up? William Lyon Phelps Cat an Indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong In the domestic circle Ambrose Bierce Cat a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs and patronizes human beings Oliver Herford What astonished him was that cats should have two holes cut 10 their skins at exactly the same places where their eyes were Georg C Lichtenberg When I play With my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? Michel de Montaigne CAUSE A cause may be mconvement, but It'S magnificent It's hke champagne or high shoes, and one must be prepared to suffer for It Arnold Bennett

868

CAUTION CEREMONY 869 870 871 872

49

CAUTION Caution what we call cowardice m others Oscar Wilde There are men who would even be afraid to commit themselves to the doctnne that castor 011 IS a laxative Camille Flammanon Don't monkey WIth the buzz saw Amerzcan Saying Ever since I started flying Jets I ve been dnvmg cars slower and slower I can t explain why-just cautious James Iabara first U S Jet ace m Korean hosttltttes CELEBRITY A celebnty IS one who IS known to many persons he IS glad he doesn't know H L Mencken A celebrity IS a person who works hard all hIS hfe to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized Fred Allen CELIBACY As to marnage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he WIll be sure to repent Socrates Marriage has many pams, but celibacy has no pleasures Samuel Johnson CEMETERY He who seeks equality should go to a cemetery German Proverb I have seen beautiful cemeteries But It IS a form of beauty I do not care for Edgar W Howe The fence around a cemetery IS foolish, for those mside can't corne out and those outside don't want to get III Arthur Brisbane CENSORSHIP Censorship ends In logical completeness when nobody IS allowed to read any books except the books nobody can read George Bernard Shaw Assassmanon IS the extreme form of censorship Ibid She flays WIth indrgnanon haughty The passages she thinks are naughty, But reads them carefully so that She'll know what to be angry at Edward Anthony CENSURE Censure IS the tax a man pays to the public for bemg emment Jonathan SWift When the million applaud, you ask yourself what harm you have done, when they censure you, what good Charles C Colton CEREMONY Ceremony IS the mvention of WIse men to keep fools at a distance Sir Richard Steele

873 874

875 876

877 878 879

880 881 882

883 884

885

50

CERTAIN CHARACTER

886 887

CERTAIN I have lived In this world Just long enough to look carefully the second time into thmgs that I am the most certain of the first time Josh Blllmgs There IS nothing more certain than that age and youth are right, except perhaps that both are wrong Robert LOUIS Stevenson CHAIR A surpnsmg number of the world s rulers have satisfied their sense of fun almost exclusrvely by the simple expedient of pulling the chair from under the Queen Will Cuppy CHANCE Chance IS the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign Anatole France

888

889

890

CHANGE With me a change of trouble IS as good as a vacation David Lloyd George 891 I have not permitted myself gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man In the country but I am rernmded In this connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that It was not best to swap horses when cross 109 a stream Abraham Lzncoln 892 The only certainty IS that nothing IS certain Plmy the Elder 893 894 895 I m a study of a man
10

chaos

10

search of frenzy

CHAOS Oscar Levant

CHARACTER Character IS long-standmg habit Plutarch Everyone IS as God made him-and very often worse Miguel de Cervantes 896 I like him and his WIfe, he IS so ladyhke and she's such a perfect gentleman Sydney Smith 897 Many people have character who have ncthmg else Don Herold 898 If he does really think that there IS no distmction between vice and Virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons Samuel Johnson 899 The proper time to influence the character of a child IS about a hundred years before he IS born William RInge 900 Character what you are 10 the dark DWight L Moody 901 In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy pleasant fellow, Hast so much Wit and mirth and spleen about thee, There IS no lrvmg With thee, nor Without thee Joseph Addison 902 You often ask me, Pnscus, what sort of man I should be, If all of a sudden I became nch and powerful Do you think that anybody can

CHARITY CHARMING

51

tell you what hIS future character will be? Tell me, If you became a hon what sort of lion would you be? Martial 903 CHARITY Simple rules for saving money to save half, when you are fired by an eager Impulse to contnbute to a chanty walt and count forty To save three quarters, count SIxty To save It all, count sixty five Mark Twazn Chanty like nature, abhors a vacuum Next to puttmg It Into the bank, men like to squander their superfluous wealth on those to whom It IS sure of doing the least possible good William Hazlut I rather think there IS an Immense shortage of Chnstian chanty among so called Chnstrans Harry S Truman Chanty begins at home, and justice begms next door Charles Dickens Chanty a thmg that begins at home, and usually stays there Elbert Hubbard Chanty uncovers a multrtude of sins Carolyn Wells Feel for others-m your pocket Charles Haddon Spurgeon Professronal charrty-s-the milk of human blindness Thomas L Masson He belongs to so many benevolent SOCIeties that he IS destitute Edgar W Howe Kind words WIll never die-s-nerther WIll they buy groceries Edgar WIlson Nye After many years' experience, I have come to learn that the present moment whatever It may be, IS never a good one for raising money Pnnce Philip CHARM A clever ugly man every now and then IS successful WIth the ladles, but a handsome fool IS irresrstible Wilham M Thackeray If you have charm, you don't need to have anything else and If you don t have It, It doesn't matter what else you have Sir James M Barne Unless one IS wealthy there IS no use In being a charming fellow Oscar W,lde WIth one hand he put A penny In the urn of poverty And With the other took a shilhng out Robert Pollok CHARMING When men give up saymg what IS charmmg, they cease thmkmg what IS charming Oscar WIlde All charmmg people are spoiled It 18 the secret of their ~1o Ibid

904 905 906 907 908 909 910 911

912

913

914 915 916 917

918 919

52 920 921 922 923

CHASTITY CHESS Charmmg people live up to the very edge of their charm and behave as outrageously as the world will let them Logan Pearsall Smith She never was really charming till she died Terence CHASTITY An unattempted woman cannot boast of her chasnty Michel de Montatgne Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar IS chastity Remy de Gourmont CHATTERTON, THOMAS He was an Instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man IS of age Horace Walpole CHEATING Nobody really loves to be cheated but It does seem as though everyone IS anxious to see how near he could come to It Josh Billings Commerce IS the school of cheatmg Luc de Vauvenargues It IS almost always worthwhile to be cheated people's little frauds have an Interest which amply repays what they cost us Logan Pearsall Smith Don't steal, thou'lt never thus compete Successfully In business Cheat Ambrose Bierce You can't cheat an honest man David W Maurer quoting confidence men CHECK Everyone, even the richest and most mumficent of men, pays much by check more lightheartedly than he pays little 1D specIe Max Beerbohm The art of life ISto be so well known at a good restaurant that you can pay WIth a check E V Lucas Among the books WIth unhappy endings are checkbooks Anonymous Cheer up, the worst IS yet to come CHEERFULNESS Philander Johnson CHEESE IS that

924

925 926 927 928 929

930 931 932 933 934 935 936

Cheese milk's leap toward immortahty Clifton Fadiman The main difference between SWISScheese and Camembert the ventilation IS a httle better Anonymous An apple pIe without some cheese Is hke a kiss WIthout a squeeze Old English Rhyme

937

CHESS To recur to the deliberate methods of our great chess players, we hear that one of them has bequeathed hIS next move to hIS grandson Punch

CHICAGO CHILDREN

53

938 939

A humorist asks why no costume has ever been designed for chess Well, there IS the two pants suit Detroit News A foolish expedient for making Idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wastmg their tune George Bernard Shaw CHICAGO Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse, One comfort we have=-Cmcmnatr sounds worse Oliver Wendell Holmes welcommg the Commercial Club of Chicago CHILDREN The burnt child shuns the fire until the next day Mark Twain Their [my parents] first crop of children was born [m Tennessee] I was postponed to MISSOUri MISSOUriwas an unknown new state and needed attractions Ibid It's a WIse child that owes hIS own father Carolyn Wells It now costs more to amuse a child than It once did to educate hIS father Herbert V Prochnow When children run away from home, It IS possible they may be looking for their mothers Ibid First you have to teach a child to talk then you have to teach It to keep quiet Ibid I always knew children were antisocial But the children of the West SIde-they re savage Marc Connelly The best way to make children IS to make them happy Oscar Wilde Children begm by lovmg their parents as they grow older they Judge them sometimes they forgive them Ibid We Iike little children, because they tear out as soon as they get what they want Frank McKznney Hubbard Children have more need of models than of CrItICS Joseph Joubert The reason why parents love the younger children best IS because they have now so little hope that the elder WIll do well Japanese Proverb To be fit for life m SOCIetyevery chtld, as well as every dog, must be housebroken Edwm G Conklin Children are a great comfort In your old age-and they help you reach It faster, too Lionel M Kauffman She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn't take them along Margaret Culkin Banning There are many loving parents In the world, but no loving children Chinese Proverb Other people's harvests are always the best harvests, but one's children are always the best children Ibid

940

941 942

943 944 945 946 947 948 949 950 951 952

953 954 955 956 957

54

CHILDREN

958 959 960 961 962 963 964 965 966 967 968 969 970 971 972 973 974 975

976

Children are natural mimics-they act like their parents In spite of every attempt to teach them good manners Anonymous Children are all foreigners We treat them as such Ralph Waldo Emerson We think our children a part of ourselves though as they grow up they might very well undeceive us Lord Halifax You are to have as strict a guard upon yourself amongst your chil dren as If you were amongst your enemies Ibid Children and watches must not be constantly wound up-you must let them run, too Jean Paul Children are charades their parents are called upon to solve Fried rich Hebbel You can do anything With children If you only play With them Otto von Bismarck Raising children IS like makmg biscuits, It IS as easy to raise a big batch as one, while you have your hands m the dough Edgar W Howe Don t take up a man's time talking about the smartness of your children he wants to talk to you about the smartness of his children Ibzd All children are natural, but some are more so than others and are therefore known as natural children Will Cuppy Children hke dogs, have so sharp a scent that they detect everythtngthe bad before all the rest Johann von Goethe Before I got married I had SIX: theories about bnngmg up children now I have six children, and no theones Lord Rochester Children are horribly Insecure, the life of a parent IS the life of a gambler Sydney Smith Clnldren are given to us to discourage our better emotions HH Munro (Sakz) It may be bad for the child to give It a SWift smack occasionally, but what a good thing It IS for the mother' Nursery World Reasonmg With a child IS fine, If you can reach the child's reason Without destroying your own John Mason Brown I think I can say I had as unhappy a childhood as the next braggart Peter de Vrzes The child that IS not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He IS a naughty child, I'm sureOr else his dear papa IS poor Robert LoUIS Stevenson A child should always say what's true And speak when he IS spoken to, And behave mannerly at table, At least as far as he IS able Ibid

CHINESE CHRISTIAN

55

Nothing offends children more than to play down to them All the great children's books-the Pilgrim s Progress Robinson Crusoe, Grimm s Fairy Tales and Gulliver s Travels-were written for adults George Bernard Shaw 978 Tram your child In the way In whrch you know you should have gone yourself Charles Haddon Spurgeon 979 Parents were Invented to make children happy by giving them somethmg to Ignore Ogden Nash 980 The worldwide fraternity of children IS the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one WhIChshows no SIgn of dying out Douglas Newton 981 How long does a boy really belong to you? FIve, maybe SIX years Then for ten years he IS a savage, and for the next five years a callow introvert WIth mental growing pains Hat Boyle 982 A lady's announcement to her girl fnends that she IS going to do what after all, qurte a number of other women have done beforenamely, grve birth to a ChIld-IS the SIgnal for them all to burst into tears Cornelia Otis Skinner 983 There IS only one pretty child In the world and every mother has It Cheshire Proverb 984 Nature makes boys and grrls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acqUIre some sense William Lyon Phelps 985 986 987 CHINESE All Chinese are Confuciamsts when successful, and Taoists when they are failures The Confuciantst in us builds and stnves, while the Taoist 1D us watches and smiles Lin Yutang The humor of the Chmese people IS seen In mventmg gunpowder and flnding Its best use 1D making firecrackers for their grandfathers' birthdays Ibid There are only two kmds of Chmese-those who give bnbes and those who take them RUSSIan Proverb CHIP He was not merely a chip off the old block, but the old block Itself Edmund Burke
CHOICE

977

988

989

When you have to make a choice and don't make It, that IS in Itself a choice William James CHRISTIAN Most people believe that the Christian commandments are mtentionally a httle too severe-like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late 1D the morning Soren Kzerkegaard People m general are equally hornfied at hearmg the Chnsnan religion doubted, and at seeing It practrced Samuel Butler Christian one who believes that the New Testament IS a divmely

990 991 992

56

CHRISTIANITY CHURCH

993 994 995

996

mspired book admirably surted to the spmtual needs of his neighbor Ambrose BIerce A shipwrecked sailor, landing on a lonely beach, observed a gallows , Thank God, he exclaimed, 'I am in a ChnstIan country" Anonymous The last Chnstian died on the cross F W N tetzsche A Christian IS a man who feels Repentance on a Sunday For what he did on Saturday And IS gOIng to do on Monday T R Ybarra A Chnstian IS hke a locomotrve a fire must be kindled In the heart of the thing before It WIll go M W Jacobus CHRISTIANITY Infidel In New York, one who does not believe In the Chnstian religion, m Constannnople, one who does Ambrose Bierce CHRISTMAS Family ties are stronger at Chnstmas-and louder Anonymous The height of rrony IS to give father a billfold at Chnstmas Anonymous CHURCH There are ten church members by mhentance for one by conviction Austin 0 Malley Hearmg Mass IS the ceremony I most favor dunng my travels Church IS the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back General Charles de Gaulle A sparrow fluttering about the church IS an antagonist which the most profound theologian In Europe IS wholly unable to overcome Sydney Smuh. There are not many people who would care to sleep In a church I don t mean at sermon time In warm weather (when the thing has actually been done, once or twice), but In the mght, and alone Charles DIckens If you go to church, and like the s1Og1Og better than the preachmg, that s not orthodox Edgar W Howe Campbell IS a good man a pIOUSman I am afraid he has not been 10 the 10SIde of a church for many years but he never passes a church without pulling off hIS hat ThIS shows that he has good principles Samuel Johnson So she goes to church It's cheaper than the psychoanalyst and more convenient, bemg only once a week Aubrey Menen Depressions may bnng people closer to the church-but so do funerals Clarence Darrow The Bntish churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks

997

998 999

1000 1001 1002 1003

1004 1005

1006 1007 1008

CICERO CITY

57

a few homely Bernard Shaw 1009

truths

will do hIS neighbors

no harm

George

CICERO CIcero s style bores me When I have spent an hour reading him-ea good deal for me-and try to recollect what I have extracted, I usually find It nothing but WInd Michel de Montatgne CIder smiles Proverb
10

1010

your face, and then cuts your throat

CIDER English:

1011 1012

CIGAR I have made It a rule never to smoke more than one CIgar at a time Mark Twain What this country needs IS a good five-cent CIgar Thomas R Marshall A cigarette IS the perfect type of perfect pleasure and It leaves one unsatisfied Oscar Wilde CIGARETIE It IS exquisite

1013

1014

CIRCUMLOCUTION There lives no man who at some penod has not been tormented by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution Edgar Allen Poe CIRCUS We suppose a sword swallower gets hIS start WIth green peas and a knife Anonymous CIrcus a place where horses, ponies and elephants are permitted to see men women and children acting the fool Ambrose Bierce CIrcus an entertaimng performance in competition With the human race Herbert V Prochnow CITY The reason American crties are prosperous IS that there IS no place to Sit down A J Talley At length the dead crties, Troy, Mycenae Argos, Amplupohs, Cormth, Sparta will do a dance macabre WIth New York, Berlm London, Paris Henry S Haskins It IS not a bad Idea to remind the people who lrve 10 towns and get their milk 10 tms or bottles and butter In packets, that It all starts WIth the COW Prtnce Philip Suburb the bedroom of a metropolis Anonymous Cities have always been the fireplaces of crvrhzanon, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark Theodore Parker City life nnllions of people being lonesome together Henry D Thoreau

1015 1016 1017

1018 1019 1020 1021 1022 1023

i8

CIVILIZATION

CLASSES

.024

We can be nowhere private except Lamb

Crvihzation

In

the midst of London

Charles

.025

CIVILIZATION IS a Iimrtless mulnphcatron of unnecessary necessaries Mark Twazn .026 The ongm of civilizatron IS man s determinatron to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him H C Bailey .027 Crvilrzanon alms at making all good thmgs accessible even to cowards F W Nietzsche .028 A high civihzation IS a pyramid It can stand only on a broad base Its primary prerequisite IS a strong and soundly consolidated medi ocnty Ibid .029 The path of crvihzation IS paved with tin cans Elbert Hubbard .030 Crvihzanon IS the process of reducing the mflnrte to the fimte Olzver Wendell Holmes Jr .031 The fate of crvilization IS like needlework You can take It up and worry about It at odd moments Frank Sullivan .032 The end of the human race will be that It WIll eventually die of civihzation Ralph Waldo Emerson .033 I d lrke some of It [money] to go where It would undo two great American falsittes=-that making money IS distinguished and Important and that motorcars and lavatones have anything to do With what IS called crvihzation LoUIS Bromfield .034 A VISItor from Mars could easily pick out the civihzed nations They have the best Implements of war Herbert V Prochnow .035 When mankind had nothing better to do It fashioned sundials A later crvihzation, desmng to be bored by night as well as by day devised clocks Wtlltam J Fallon .036 Civilization IS an active deposit which IS formed by the combustion of the Present and the Past Cyril Connolly .037 As soon as a nation becomes civilized It dies yet man has but one Idea-to become CIVIlized Thus he assists nature to correct her errors Holbrook Jackson .038 I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely Voltaire l039 By being crvihzed we mean that there IS a certain list of things about which we permit a man to have an opinion different from ours Usually they are thmgs which we have ceased to care about for mstance, the worship of God Aubrey Menen l040 l041 He talked With more claret than clarity Susan Ertz CLARITY

CLASSES A moderately honest man With a moderately faithful Wife, moderate drinkers both, In a moderately healthy house that IS the true middle class umt George Bernard Shaw

CLASSICS CLICHE

59

1042

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world those who constantly divide the people of the world Into two classes, and those who do not Robert Benchley CLASSICS Have I uttered the fundamental blasphemy, that once said sets the spmt free? The hterature of the past IS a bore-when one has said that frankly to oneself, then one can proceed to qualify and make exceptions Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr A claSSIC IS something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read Mark Twain My friend the professor of Greek tells me that he truly believes the classics have made him what he IS This IS a very grave statement If well founded Stephen Leacock Books are always the better for not being read Look at our classics George Bernard Shaw Men turn to the claSSICSto escape from their contemporanes Frank Moore Colby Classical literature IS the literature of which we do not expect anythmg new Karel Capek CLEOPATRA Caesar rrught have married Cleopatra, but he had a Wife at horne There's always something Will Cuppy CLERGYMAN Clergyman a ticket speculator outside the gates of heaven H L Mencken A man who IS good enough to go to heaven IS good enough to be a clergyman Samuel Johnson A congregation that can't afford to pay a clergyman enough want a mrssionary more than they do a clergyman Josh Btllings CLEVER What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us IS that they think themselves cleverer than we are Francois de La Roche
foucauld

1043

1044 1045 1046 1047 1048

1049

1050 1051 1052

1053 1054 1055 1056 1057

It takes much The Athenians It to himself Clever people Wilde Everybody IS meeting clever Ibid

cleverness to know how to conceal cleverness Ibid do not mmd a man being clever, as long as he keeps Plato never hsten and stupid people never talk Oscar clever nowadays You can t go anywhere without people ThIS has become an absolute public nuisance CLICHE Harold

1058

He IS forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion Macmillan

60

CLIENT CLOTHES

1059 1060

The best client IS a scared millionaire

Anonymous

CLIENT

CLOSET There IS sornethmg about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless Wilson MIzner CLOTHES She wears her clothes as If they were thrown on her WIth a pitchfork Jonathan Switt I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini Alexander W oollcott Judge a man not by hIS clothes, but by hIS WIfe's clothes Thomas Robert Dewar "When Suetonrus wasn t busying himself with scandal he had an interestmg nose for detail DId you know what Augustus Caesar wore under hIS Impenal Toga?' I said that I didn't 'Flannel drawers" Aubrey Menen One good thmg about having one suit of clothes-you've always got your pencil Frank McKznney Hubbard No wonder nobody that s got as much money Invested in shoes and hose as a woman wants to stick around home I bid No woman should have enough clothes to make her ask, What'll I wear?' Don Herold Neatness IS the asepsis of clothes Sir William Osler To most people a savage nation IS one that doesn't wear uncom fortable clothes Fmley Peter Dunne Modesty died when clothes were born Mark Twain It IS an mterestmg question how far men would retam their relatrve rank If they were divested of their clothes Henry D Thoreau Beware of all enterprises that reqUIre new clothes Ibid I hate to see men overdressed a man ought to look like he's put together by accident not added up on purpose Christopher Morley Women who are not vain about their clothes are often vain about not being vain about their clothes Cyril Scott A VISItto a country house IS a series of meals mmgated by the new dresses of the ladles Beruamtn Dtsraelt What would we say If men changed the length of their trousers every year? Lady Astor She looked as If she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when" P G W odehouse Why IS It a woman who constantly complains that she has nothing to wear has to have SlX closets to keep It in? Detroit News

1061 1062 1063 1064

1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1070 1071 1072 1073

1074 1075 1076 1077 1078

CLOUD COLLEGE

61

1079

CLOUD Every cloud has Its silver hmng but It IS sometimes a little difficult to get It to the mmt Don MarqUIS COATS OF ARMS Coats of arms are family badges mdicatmg descent from a common ancestor-a phrase that many of those who want •coats' don t like to begin With Cleveland Amory COCKTAILS Cocktails have all the drsagreeabihty Without the utility of a dismfectant Shane Leslie A cocktail IS a pleasant drink Mild and harmless-I don t think Anonymous Whiskey and vermouth cannot meet as friends and the Manhattan IS an offense against piety Bernard De Voto Motto of a modern coed every man for herself Anonymous COED

1080

1081 1082 1083

1084 1085 1086 1087 1088 1089 1090

COFFEE Coffee in England IS Just toasted milk Christopher Fry The coffee break" up 1D our tower Were better called the coffee hour" Leverett Lyon There IS no compensation for and few antidotes to, the concocbon that In these Islands [Britain] IS supposed to be coffee H E Scarsborough If this IS coffee, please bring me some tea but If this IS tea please bring me some coffee Abraham Lincoln Coffee has two virtues It IS wet and warm Dutch Proverb Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love Turkish Proverb COINCIDENCE By an unfailmg comcidence, the man who wrongs us IS a villam, and the man who does us a kindness IS a saint Henry S Haskins COLD The threat of a neglected cold IS for doctors what the threat of purgatory IS for pnests-a gold mme Nicolas Chamfort A bad cold wouldn't be so annoying If It weren't for the advice of our friends Frank McKznney Hubbard A cold IS both positrve and negative, sometimes the Eyes have It and sometimes the Nose William Lyon Phelps COLLEGE Helping your eldest son pick a college IS one of the great educational experIences of lIfe-for the parents Next to trying to pick his bride, It s the best way to learn that your authority, If not entirely gone, IS shppmg fast Sally and James Reston

1091

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1095

62

COLLEGE EXECUTIVES COMEDIAN

1097 1098 1099 1100

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You can lead a boy to college but you cannot make him think Elbert Hubbard A modern college IS a place where 2,000 can be seated in the classrooms and 50000 m the stadium Anonymous Theodore Roosevelt said a thorough knowledge of the Bible was worth more than a college education A thorough knowledge of anythmg IS worth more than a college education Yale Record College men are amazingly Ignorant Thomas A Edison The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergradu ates Woodrow Wilson Some men are graduated from college cum laude, some are grad uated summa cum laude, and some are graduated mirabile dictu Wzll,am Howard Taft Oxford a sanctuary 10 which exploded systems and obsolete preJu dices find shelter and protection after they have been hunted out of every corner of the world Adam Smzth Nothmg Irks a college student more than shaking out the envelope from home and finding nothmg in It but news and love Detrou News COLLEGE EXECUTIVES

1104 Perhaps you have heard about the college executives who were
dlSCUSSlDg hat they wanted w to run a pnson or school of come back to VISit Another so he would not be plagued Jackson to do after retirement age One hoped correction so the alumni would never chose to manage an orphan asylum With advice from parents Robert H

1105

COLOGNE In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fanged With murderous stones, And rags, and hags and hideous wenches, I counted two and seventy stenches All well defined, and several stinks! Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The nver Rhine, It IS well known Doth wash your city of Cologne, But tell me Nymphs I what power divme Shall henceforth wash the rrver Rhine? Samuel Taylor Coleridge COLOR I cannot pretend to feel Impartial about colors I rejoice With the bnlhant ones and am genumely sorry for the poor browns Sir Wmston Churchill COMEDIAN I'm told that all really funny comedians are serious Noel Coward Hollywood IS no place for the professional comedran=-there's too much amateur competrtion Fred Allen

1106

1107 1108

COMEDY COMMERCE 1109 1110

63

COMEDY The most difficult character in comedy IS the fool, and he must be no fool who plays that part Miguel de Cervantes Englrsh comedy has always been made by Irishmen Austtn OMalley COMFORT The man who expects comfort m this life must be born deaf, dumb and bhnd Turkish Proverb There IS nothing so consoling as to find that one s neighbor's troubles are at least as great as one's own George Moore COMIC All men are comrc, especially deans, bishops and drum majors, who dress their parts George Bernard Shaw Man IS a very comrc creature and most of the thmgs he does are cormo=-eatmg; for Instance And the most comic things of all are exactly the thmgs that are most worth domg-such as making love G K Chesterton COMMANDMENT The Eleventh Commandment Thou shalt not be found out George Whyte-Melville The Eleventh Commandment Mind your own business Anonymous COMMENCEMENT The commencement speaker represents the contmuation of a barbane custom that has no basis In logic If the state of oratory that inundates our educational mstitutions dunng the month of June could be transformed mto ram for Southern Califorma, we should all be happy awash or waterlogged Samuel Gould Each of June's new graduates Has left hIS college hall The world IS now hIS oyster, The future IS hIS thrall He thinks he knows a great, great deal More than hIS parents do-And, speakmg of that state of mmd, The chances are It s true' Leverett Lyon COMMENDATION Commendation the tnbute that we pay to achievements that resemble, but do not equal, our own Ambrose Bierce COMMERCE It IS well known what a middleman IS he IS a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other Berqamm Dtsraelt

1111 1112

1113 1114

1115 1116

1117

1118

1119

1120

64 1121 1122 1123 1124 1125

COMMITTEE COMMON SENSE If you want to kill any Idea In the world today, get a committee working on It Charles F Kettering If Moses had been a committee the Israelites would still be 10 Egypt J B Hughes Nothmg IS ever accomphshed by a committee unless It consists of three members, one of whom happens to be SIck and the other absent H endnk Van Loon A group of men who keep minutes and waste hours Anonymous A committee IS a group of men who mdrvidnally can do nothing but collectively can meet and decide that nothing can be done Anonymous The State, that cawing rookery of committees and subcommittees V S Pritchett A committee IS a cul de sac to which Ideas are lured and then quietly strangled John A Lzncoln Having served on various committees, I have drawn up a list of rules Never arrive on time, thts stamps you as a beginner Don't say anything until the meeting IS half over this stamps you as bemg WIse Be as vague as possible this avoids imtatmg the others When m doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed Be the first to move for adjournment, this WIll make you popular, It'S what everyone IS waiting for Harry Chapman
COMMON MAN COMMITTEE

1126 1127

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1129

The greatest service we can do the Common Man IS to abolish him SIr Norman Angell Nowadays most people rue of a sort of creeping common sense and discover, when It IS too late that the only thmgs one never regrets are one's mistakes Oscar WIlde No woman, plam or pretty, has any common sense at all Common sense IS the pnvilege of our sex and we men are so self sacnficmg that we never use It Ibid Common sense IS not so common Voltaire Academic and aristocratic people hve 1D such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them Samuel Butler I think that common sense, In a rough dogged way, IS technically sounder than the special schools of phrlosophy, each of which squmts and overlooks half the facts and half the difficulties 1D Its eagerness to find In some detail the key to the whole George Santayana I don't know why It IS that the relIgIOUSnever ascribe common sense to God W Somerset Maugham He's a man of great common sense and good taste-meamng
COMMON SENSE

1130 1131 1132 1133 1134

1135 1136

COMMUNISM COMPLACENCY thereby a man Bernard Shaw 1137 1138 without ongmahty or moral courage

65 George

1139 1140

1141 1142 1143 1144

1145

COMMUNISM Communists are frustrated Capitalists Eric Hoffer Trying to mamtam good relations WIth the communists IS hke wooing a crocodile You do not know whether to tickle It under the chin or beat It over the head wren It opens Its mouth you cannot tell whether It IS trymg to smile or preparmg to eat you up Str Wmston Churchzll What a communist he IS' He would have an equal drstnbution of sin as well as property Oscar Wzlde Communism IS IdIOCY They want to drvide up the property Sup pose they did It It requIres brains to keep money as well as to make It In a precIous little while the money would be back In the former owner's hands and the communist would be poor again The division would have to be remade every three years or It would do the communist no good Mark Twam A red IS any son of a bitch who wants thirty cents when we're paying twenty-five John Stem beck A communist IS a guy who says everything IS perfect in Soviet RUSSIa,but stays here because he hkes to rough It Anonymous Communist one who has nothing and IS eager to share It WIth others Anonymous What IS a communist? One who hath yearnmgs For equal division of unequal earnmgs Idler or bungler, or both, he IS willing, To fork out hIS copper and pocket your shillmg Ebenezer Elliott I am a good fnend to communists abroad but I do not like them at horne Souvanna Phouma COMMUTER The only way of catching a tram I ever dtscovered IS to mISS the tram before G K Chesterton

1146

;/ COMPANY 1117 I'A man IS known by the company he avoids Anonymous "l "" COMPENSATION 1148 If the poor man cannot always get meat, the nch man cannot always digest It Henry Giles 1149 Since I must be old and have the gout, I have long turned those disadvantages to my own account, and plead them to the utmost when they WIll save me from doing anything I dislike Horace Walpole

1150

COMPLACENCY He's all buttoned up m an Impenetrable little coat of complacency llka Chase

66 1151 1152 1153

COMPLAINT CONCEIT COMPLAINT If you have the nght to complain when there IS nothmg to com plain about, you are Irving 10 a democracy Anonymous Complaint IS the largest tnbute heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devotion Jonathan Swzft If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled PG Wodehouse COMPLEXION Nothmg helps a person s complexion like puttmg It to bed before 2 AM Herbert V Prochnow A histonan announces that women used cosmetics 10 the Middle Ages Women still use cosmetics In the middle ages Judge COMPLIMENT Some folks pay a compliment like they went down In their pocket for It Frank McKznney Hubbard Some people pay a comphment like they expected a receipt Ibtd Comphments always embarrass a man You do not know anythmg to say It does not msprre you WIth words There IS nothmg you can say m answer to a compliment I have been complImented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough Mark Twam I can hve for two months on a good compliment Ibid When you cannot get a compliment In any other way, pay your self one Ibid A compliment IS something like a kiss through a veil Victor Hugo Women are never disarmed by compliments, men always are Oscar Wilde Compliments have lost their lure by the time a man does not have to fish for them Henry S Haskins COMPOSER In order to compose, all you need to do IS remember a tune that nobody else has thought of Robert Schumann There are no woman composers, never have been and possibly never WIll be SIr Thomas Beecham If you can't lick 'em, join 'em Mr James Payn IS an adept worth flndmg Oscar Wilde
In

1154 1155

1156 1157 1158

,,1159 1160 \/1161 1162 1163

1164 1165

1166 1167

COMPROMISE American Polltical Proverb CONCEAL the art of concealmg what IS not CONCEIT Arthur Guzterman

1168

Until the donkey tned to clear The fence, he thought himself a deer

CONCEIT

67

1169 1170 1171 1172 1173 1174 1175 1176 1177 1178 1179 1180 1181 1182 1183 1184 1185 1186 1187 " 1188 1189 1190 1191

Conceit IS God's gift to lrttle men Bruce Barton Tell me, George [Gershwin], If you had It to do allover, would you fall in love WIth yourself again? Oscar Levant He [Bernard Shaw] had discovered himself and gave ungrudgingly of hIS discovery to the world H H Munro (Saki) Conceit IS such a small thmg after all' Conceit IS only mountainhigh, world wide or ocean-deep' Thomas Wolfe When I say everybody says so," It means I say so Edgar W Howe The sun will set WIthout thy assistance Talmud I ve never any pIty for conceited people because I think they carry their comfort about with them George EZzot He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow Ibid We reproach people for talking about themselves, but It IS the subject they treat best Anatole France One of my chief regrets dunng my years m the theater IS that I couldn't SIt in the audience and watch me John Barrymore Concerted men often seem a harmless kind of men who by an overweening self respect relieve others from the duty of respectmg them at all Henry Ward Beecher Every man has a right to be conceited until he IS successful Berqamin Dtsraelt Conceit IS Just as natural a thmg to human mmds as a center IS to a CIrcle Oltver Wendell Holmes The personal pronoun 'I' should be the coat of arms of some mdmduals Comte de Rivarol I stnve automatically to bring the world mto harmony WIth my own nature George Bernard Shaw Edith was a httle country bounded on the north, south, east and west by Edith Martha Ostenso Conceit causes more conversation than WIt Francois de La Roche[oucauld A fly sate upon the axle tree of the chariot wheel, and said, 'What a dust do I raise." FranCIS Bacon To love oneself IS the beginnmg of a hfelong romance Oscar IWzlde And so we plow along. as the fly said to the ox Henry W Long fellow A man that IS deeply m love WIth himself WIll probably succeed 10 hIS swt owing to lack of rivals Austzn 0 Malley Most men are hke eggs, too full of themselves to hold anythmg else Iosh Blllzngs If there IS one thing in the world that will make a man peculiarly

68

CONCENTRATION CONFUSED

1192

and insufferably self-conceited, It IS to have his stomach behave Itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are seaSIck Mark Twazn When some men discharge an obhganon, you can hear the report for miles around Ibid CONCENTRATION When a man knows he IS to be hanged 1D a fortrught, It con centrates hIS mmd wonderfully Samuel Johnson CONDUCT Any preoccupation WIth Ideas of what IS right or wrong 1D conduct shows an arrested intellectual development Oscar Wzlde CONDUCTOR This backward Man, this view obstructor, Is known to us as the Conductor Laurence McKinney Coney Island where the surf IS one-third people John Steinbeck CONEY ISLAND water and two thirds

1193

1194

1195

1196

1197

CONFERENCE This conference should not be overhung by a ponderous or rigid agenda or led into mazes of techmcal details, zealously contested by hordes of experts and officials drawn up 1D a vast cumbrous array Sir Wznston Churchill CONFESSION Confess your SIOSto the Lord and you will be forgiven confess them to man and you will be laughed at Josh Billings All the good wnters of confessions, from Augustine onward, are men who are still a httle In love WIth their SlOS A natole France Confession IS good for the soul only 10 the sense that a tweed coat IS good for dandruff-It IS a palliative rather than a remedy Peter de Vnes Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for the reputation Thomas Robert Dewar

1198 1199 1200 1201

1202

CONFIDENCE All you need 10 this hfe IS Ignorance and confidence and then success IS sure Mark Twain 1203 He gradually wormed hIS way out of my confidence Nunnally Johnson 1204 Confidence the feeling that makes one believe a man, even when one knows that one would he In his place H L Mencken 1205 I WIsh I was as cocksure of anythmg as Tom Macaulay IS of everything Lord Melbourne 1206 He flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off Stephen Leacock
10

CONFUSED all directions

CONGESTION CONSCIENCE 1207

69

CONGESTION The thing which In the subway IS called congestion IS highly esteemed In the night spots as mtimacy Simeon Strunsky CONGRESS Fleas can be taught nearly anythmg that a Congressman can Mark Twazn It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there IS no drstmctrvely native American cnmmal class except Congress Ibid Reader suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a mem ber of Congress but I repeat myself Ibid Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to Jail It IS the same thmg, after all Eugene Field WIth Congress every time they make a Joke It S a law, and every time they make a law It'S a Joke Will Rogers Some members of Congress would best promote the country's peace by holding their own George D Prentice I have been up to see Congress and they do not seem to be able to do anything except to eat peanuts and chew tobacco while my army IS starving Robert E Lee Trying to solve the country's problems WIth Congressional oratory IS hke trying to untangle a traffic Jam by honking your horn Anonymous Thmk of what would happen to us ID America If there were no humonsts, hfe would be one long Congressional Record Thomas L Masson CONQUERING Caesar was too old to set about amusing himself WIth conquering the world Such sport was good for Augustus or Alexander They were still young men, and thus difficult to restrain But Caesar should have been more mature Blaise Pascal
I thmk

1208

1209 1210 1211 1212 1213 1214 1215 1216

1217

1218 He [Gladstone] made hIS conscience not hIS guide but hIS ac- complice Beruamm Dzsraelz

CONSCIENCE

'"1220

lri9 A guilty conscience IS the mother of mvennon

Carolyn Wells Conscience IS lD most men, an anticrpation of the OpInIOn of others Sir Henry Taylor 1221 Conscience the thing that acts when everything IS feeling good Anonymous 1222 We grow WIth years more fragile 10 body, but morally stouter and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once Logan Pearsall Smith 1223 An uneasy conscience IS a hair In the mouth Mark Twazn 1224 Conscience and cowardice are really the same things Conscience IS the trade name of the firm Oscar Wilde

70

CONSERVATIVE

1225 Conscience makes egotists of us all Ibid 1226", And what has saved her virtue? The VOIce of her conscience? Oh no The VOIce of her neighbor F W Nietzsche 1227 Nothmg IS better than frustration for waking up the conscience Henry S Haskins 1228 The conscience has morbid sensibilmes, It must be employed but not indulged hke the rmagmation or the stomach Robert LoUIS Stevenson 1229 Conscience IS the mner VOIce which warns US that someone may be looking H L Mencken 1230 Conscience IS a mother-in-law whose VISItnever ends Ibid 1231 A man has less conscience when In love than In any other condinon Arthur Schopenhauer Marttn Farquhar 1232 Yea, there IS DO cosmetic like a holy conscience Tupper 1233 The Anglo-Saxon conscience does not prevent the Anglo Saxon from smnmg It merely prevents hrm from enJOYIng hIS SiD Salva dor de Madartaga 1234 CONSERVATIVE Conservative a statesman who IS enamored of existmg evils, as distmguished from the liberal, who WIshes to replace them WIth others Ambrose BIerce 1235 The penguin flies backward because he doesn't care to see where he's going but wants to see where he's been Fred Allen 1236 A true conservative IS one who can't see any difference between radicalism and an Idea Anonymous 1237 A conservative IS a person who thinks a rich man should have a square deal Herbert V Prochnow 1238 A conservative says that a radical may sometimes be right, but when he IS, he IS right for the wrong reasons Ibid 1239 No man can be a conservative until he has somethmg to lose lames P Warburg 1240 Men are conservative when they are least VIgorous, or when they are most luxurious Ralph Waldo Emerson Men are conservatrves after dinner Ibid A conservative IS a man who does not think that anythmg should be done for the first time Frank Vanderlzp 1243 A conservative IS a man who WIll not look at the new moon, out of respect for that ancient institution the old one Douglas Jerrold 1244 A conservatrve government IS an organized hypocnsy Benjamm Dtsraelt 1245 A conservative IS a man who IS too cowardly to fight and too fat to run Elbert Hubbard

CONSISTENCY CONTENTMENT 1246 1247

71

A conservative IS a man WIth two perfectly good legs who however, has never learned to walk Franklzn Delano Roosevelt Some fellows get credit for being conservative when they are only stupid Frank McKmney Hubbard CONSISTENCY A foolish consistency IS the hobgoblm of httle minds Ralph Waldo Emerson Consistency IS the last refuge of the unimagmanve Oscar Wzlde Unfortunately I have never been able to maintain a consistent attitude toward life or reality, or toward anything else ThIS may be entirely due to nervousness James Thurber CONSOlATION Consolatron the knowledge that a better man 1S more unfortunate than yourself Ambrose Bzerce Conspiracy a game Invented for the amusement men of rank Joseph Addison There IS nothing SWift
In

1248 1249 1250

1251

1252

CONSPIRACY of unoccupied CONSTANT Jonathan

1253

this world constant but inconstancy

1254

CONSULT Consult to seek another s approval of a course already decided on Ambrose Bierce CONSUMER The only part of the hog that the packers waste IS the squeal, and the consumers furnish that Anonymous Why was I born with such contemporaries? CONTEMPORARIES George Bernard Shaw

1255

1256 1257

CONTEMPT When you cannot get a thmg, then IS the tune to have contempt for It Baltasar Gracian CONTENTMENT Contentment IS, after all, simply refined mdolence RIchard Haliburton Who IS rich? He that IS content Who IS that? Nobody Berqamin Franklzn Only the nch preach content to the poor Holbrook Jackson Be contented, when you have got all you want Ibzd I'd rather be handsome than homely, I'd rather be youthful than old, If I can't have a bushel of silver I'll do with a barrel of gold James Jeffrey Roche

1258 1259 1260 1261 1262

72
1263 A verbal contract Goldwyn

CONTRA.CT CONVERSATION CONTRACT Isn't worth the paper It's written on Samuel

1264 1265 1266

1267

CONTRADICT A man never tells you anythmg until you contradict him George Bernard Shaw The well-bred contradict other people The wise contradict themselves Oscar Wilde Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself (I am large-I contain multitudes) Walt Whitman CONTRARY Some folks are so contrary that If they fell 10 a nver, they'd inSISt on floatmg upstream Iosb Btlltngs When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy a SUbject of mterest William Hazlttt CONTROVERSY It ceases to be

1268

1269

CONVALESCENCE I enjoy convalescence It IS the part that makes the Illness worthwhile George Bernard Shaw CONVENTIONS Conventions are hke coins, an easy way of dealmg With the commerce of relations Freya Stark CONVERSATION A good listener IS not only popular everywhere but after a while he knows somethmg Wilson Mizner If every man were straightforward 1D hIS OpInIOnS,there would be no conversation Berqamui Dtsraelt Conversation should touch everything but should concentrate Itself on nothing Oscar Wilde Talk to every woman as If you loved her, and to every man as If be bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact Ibid After all, the only proper mtoxication IS conversation Ibid Whenever one has anythmg unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid Ibid If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Insh how to listen society would be qurte civilized Ibzd Learned conversation IS either the affectation of the Ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed Ibid One of the reasons that we find so few persons rational and agreeable in conversation IS that there IS hardly a person who does not think more of what he wants to say than of hrs answer to what IS said Francois de La Rachefoucauld

1270

1271 1272 1273 1274 1275 1276 1277 1278 1279

CONVERSATION

73

1280 1281 1282 1283 1284 1285 1286 1287 1288 1289 1290 1291 1292 1293 1294 1295 1296 1297 1298 1299 1300 1301

He [Macaulay] not only overflowed WIth learmng, but stood in the slop Sydney Smttb He [Macaulay] has occasional flashes of silence that make hIS conversation perfectly delightful Ibid War talk by men who have been In a war IS always mteresting, whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been In the moon IS likely to be dull Mark Twazn What a good thing Adam had-when he said a good thing he knew nobody had said It before Ibid A good memory and a tongue tied In the middle IS a combmanon which gIves immortahty to conversation Ibid HIS answers were so final and exact that he did not leave a doubt to hang conversation on Ibid Gratiano speaks an mfimte deal of nothmg, more than any man 10 all Venice Wtlltam Shakespeare Your Ignorance cramps my conversation Anthony Hope Everybody's conversation about everybody else IS a diagnosis John Colton and Clemence Randolph When you're out of luck speak louder than usual Gelett Burgess If you don't say anything you won't be called on to repeat It Calvin Coolidge I guess I am not naturally energetic I like to Sit around and talk Ibid All natural talk IS a festival of ostentation and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other Robert LoUIS Stevenson We talk little If we do not talk about ourselves Wilham Hazlnt Most of us know how to say nothmg few of us know when Anonymous Sometimes It looks like the world beats a path to your door If you produce better claptrap Anonymous The misfortune of Goldsmith In conversation IS this he goes on without knowmg how he IS to get off Samuel Johnson I never desire to converse WIth a man who has wntten more than he has read lbtd I am very fond of the company of ladies I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I hke their VIvacIty and I Iike their silence Ibzd The conversation was dull, as IS always the case when we are speaking only favorably of our fellowmen Choderlos de Laclos Contradiction and flattery both make poor conversation Johann von Goethe If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation mtroduce the subject of eatmg Letgb Hunt

74 1302 1303

CONVERSATION Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times because they had nobody to talk about Agnes Repplter One half of our best society IS always telling the other half what It does not wish to know, but the two halves take turns, and this establishes the conversation, usually on a peaceful baSIS Frank Moore Colby Women have simple tastes They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children In arms and men In love H L Mencken The secret of bemg tiresome IS to tell everythmg V oltaire The time to stop talking IS when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing Henry S Haskins Everyone wonders what a man who never says anything sounds like Oscar Levant I often quote myself It adds Spice to my conversation George Bernard Shaw Don't knock the weather, nme-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation If It didn't change once 10 a while Frank McKznney Hubbard For parlor use, the vague generality IS a lifesaver George Ade Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothmg Robert Benchley No man would listen to you talk If he didn't know It was his tum next Edgar W Howe If you thmk before you speak, the other fellow gets In his Joke first Ibid She was not a woman of many words for unlike people 10 general she proportioned them to her Ideas Jane Austen It IS all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of It now and then RIchard Armour She was a professional athlete-of the tongue Fannie Hurst He [Mr Gladstone] speaks to me as If I were a public meeting Queen Vzctorza He [Sir Winston Churchilll never spares himself 10 conversation He gives himself so generously that hardly anybody else IS permitted to give anythmg 10 his presence Aneurzn Bevan Conversation 10 this country has fallen upon evil days It IS drowned out 1D smgmg commercials by the world's most productive economy that has so httle to say for Itself It has to hum It It IS hushed and shushed 10 dimly Iighted parlors by television audiences who used to read, argue and even play bridge, an old fashioned card game requmng speech Whitney Griswold A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed He answered "In silence" Plutarch A gossip IS one who talks to you about others, a bore IS one who

1304 1305 1306 1307 1308 1309 1310 1311 1312 1313 1314 1315 1316 1317 1318 1319

1320 1321

CONVICTIONS

COOKING

75

1322 1323

1324 1325

talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist IS one who talks to you about yourself Lisa Kirk If other people are gomg to talk, conversation becomes impossible James McNelll Whistler To speak III of others IS a dishonest way of praising ourselves let us be above such transparent egotism If you can t say good and encouragmg thmgs say nothtng Nothing IS often a good thing to say, and always a clever thmg to say WIll Durant Half the world IS composed of people who have something to say and can t, and the other half who have nothmg to say, and keep on saymg It Robert Frost A good conversatronahst IS not one who remembers what was said but says what someone wants to remember John Mason Brown Convictions are opmions which circumstances have temporarily backed Henry S Haskins Convictrons are what an employee has after he knows what the boss thinks Herbert V Prochnow A conviction IS that splendid quahty In ourselves which we call bullheadedness m others Anonymous The one serious conviction that a man should have IS that nothmg IS to be taken too seriously Nicholas Murray Butler Every fool IS fully convinced, and everyone fully persuaded IS a fool Baltasar Gractan
COOKING CONVICTIONS

1326 1327 1328 1329 1330

1331 1332 1333 1334 1335 1336 1337 1338 1339 1340

When a cook cooks a fly he keeps the best wing for himself Polzsh Proverb Until the nature of man IS completely altered cooking IS the most Important thing for a woman Arnold Bennett God sends meat and the Devil sends cooks John Taylor HIS cook 18 hIS chief merit The world VISItShIS dinners not him Moliere The cook was a good cook, as cooks go and as cooks go she went H H Munro (Saki) The French cook we open tins John Galsworthy The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star Anthelme Bnllat-Savartn We may live WIthout friends we may lrve without books, But crvihzed man cannot live WIthout cooks Edward G BulwerLytton Cooking IS one of those arts WhICh most reqUIre to be done by persons of a religious nature Alfred North Whitehead The average cooking In the average hotel for the average Bnglish-

76

COOL COUNSEL

man explains to a large extent the English bleakness and tacitumrty

Karel Capek 1341 1342

There IS one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that IS the wife who can't cook and WIll Robert
Frost If you are surpnsed at the number of our maladies, count our cooks Seneca

1343

Keep cool It will be all one a hundred years hence

Emerson

COOL Ralph Waldo COOPERATION

1344

There IS some cooperation between wild creatures The stork and the wolf usually work the same neighborhood Alexander Wooll
cott

1345 1346 1347

Coquette a woman without any heart who makes a fool of a man that hasn't got any head Mme Deluzy Every hne rn her face IS the line of least resistance Irvin S Cobb A coquette IS a young lady of more beauty than sense, more accomplishments than learrung, more charms of person than graces of mmd, more admirers than frrends more fools than WIse men for attendants Henry W Longfellow Corporation an Ingemous device for obtammg mdrvidual profit without mdrvrdual responsrbihty Ambrose Bierce Corruption's not of modem date It hath been tried in every state
Proverb CORRUPTION John Gay CORSET French CORPORATION

COQUETIE

1348

1349

1350

God sent us women, and the Devil sent them corsets

1351 1352

Most women are not so young as they are painted

COSMETICS Max Beerbohm

COSMOPOLITE I don't set up for being a cosmopolite which to my mmd sigmfies being polite to every country except your own Thomas Hood COST OF LIVING I haven't heard of anybody who wants to stop Irving on account of the cost Frank McKznney Hubbard

1353

1354

No man WIlltake counsel, but every man Will take money therefore, money IS better than counsel Jonathan Swift

COUNSEL

COUNTRY COURTSHIP

77

1355

1356 1357 1358 1359 1360

COUNTRY Anybody can be good In the country There are no temptations there That IS the reason why people who hve out of town are so uncrvihzed There are only two ways of becoming civihzed one IS by being cultured, the other IS by being corrupt Country people have no opporturuty of being either, so they stagnate Oscar Wzlde I have no relish for the country It IS a kind of healthy grave Sydney Smub My country nght or wrong' IS hke saymg, 'My mother, drunk or sober" G K Chesterton Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen Lord Byron I asked Tom If countnes always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says, 'Yes, the httle one does" Mark Twazn What the country needs IS dirtier flngemails and cleaner minds Will Rogers COURAGE It IS easy to be brave from a safe distance Aesop A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bad Ethel Watts Mumford No man In the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut Channing Pollock I have never thought much of the courage of a hon tamer inside the cage he IS, at least, safe from other men George Bernard Shaw Who has not courage needs legs Italian Proverb COURT In life beware of the law court, In death beware of hell Chznese Proverb A court IS an assembly of noble and distmguished beggars Charles M de Talleyrand Perigord The penalty for laughmg In a courtroom IS SIXmonths lD jail, If It were not for this penalty, the Jury would never hear the evidence H L Mencken COURTESY Be DIce to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down WIlson Mizner COURTSHIP Courtship consists In a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood Laurence Sterne There IS nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she 18 making sausages Ibid Courtship a man purSUIng a woman until she catches him Anonymous

1361 1362 1363 1364 1365 1366 1367 1368

1369

1370 1371 1372

78

COVET CREMATION

1373

COVET Too often It IS the love of the other fellow's money which IS the root of all evil Herbert V Prochnow I never saw a Purple Cow, I never hope to see one But I can tell you anyhow Gelett Burgess I d rather see than be one My cow milks me Ralph Waldo Emerson COW

1374

1375 1376 1377 1378 1379 1380

COWARD What we consider caution In ourselves we call cowardice In others Anonymous Coward a man In whom the instmct of self-preservation acts normally Sultana Zoraya Coward one who In a perilous emergency thinks with hIS legs Ambrose Bierce The coward calls himself cautious Publtltus Syrus CRAZY Everyone IS crazy but me and thee and sometimes I suspect thee a httle Ascribed to an unknown Quaker

1381

CREDIT Credit, like a looking glass, Broken once, IS gone, alas' Anonymous 1382 Some folks get credit for having horse sense that ham t ever had enough money to make fools of themselves Frank M cKmney Hubbard 1383 Credit IS like chastity, they can both stand temptation better than SUspICIon Josh Btllings 1384 A pIg bought on credit IS forever grunting Spamsh Proverb 1385 Credit a person who can't pay gets another person who can t pay to guarantee that he can pay Charles Dickens 1386 Credit IS the capital of a younger son, and he can hve charmingly on It Oscar Wilde 1387 No man's credit IS as good as hIS money Edgar W Howe 1388 1389 CREDITORS No man IS impanent WIth hIS creditors Talmud Creditors have better memories than debtors they are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times Berqamin Franklin CREMATION As for me, I hope to be cremated I made that remark to my pastor once, who said, with what he seemed to think was an ImpressIve

1390

CRICKET CRITIC

79

manner 'I wouldn't Mark Twam 1391

worry about that

If I had your chances'

CRICKET Something the EnglIsh-not being a naturally rehgious peoplehave had to Invent to gIve them some Idea of the eternal Lord Mancroft CRIME The reason there are so many imbeciles among imprisoned cnmmals IS that an imbecile IS so foohsh even a detective can detect him Austin 0 Malley There are crimes which become innocent and even glonous by their bnlhancy, therr number, or their excess thus It happens that public robbery IS called financial skill, and the unjust capture of provinces IS called a conquest Francois de La Rochefoucauld Nobody ever commits a cnme WIthout domg somethmg stupid Oscar Wilde Cnmmal a person WIth predatory mstincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation Howard Scott The punishment of cnminals should be of use when a man IS hanged he IS good for nothing Voltaire PIckpocket s motto every crowd has a silver lmmg Anonymous He who sells what Isn't his n Must buy It back or go to prison Daniel Drew All cnmmals tum preachers under the gallows Italian Proverb

1392 1393

1394 1395 1396 1397 1398 1399 1400

CRITIC Nature fits all her children WIth something to do, He who would write and can't wnte can surely review James Russell Lowell 1401 CrItICS' Appalled I venture on the name Those cutthroat bandits lD the paths of fame Robert Burns 1402 A entre IS a legless man who teaches running Chanmng Pollock 1403 A play so loutish in Its humors and so lackmg in appeal to the mind that Hollywood naturally made It [The Taming oj the Shrew] first choice when the filming of Shakespeare began Ivor Brown 1404 A drama entre IS a person who surprIses the playwright by mformmg him what he meant Wilson Mizner 1405 A entre IS a man who expects miracles James Gibbons Huneker 1406 Those who wrrte Ill, and they who ne'er durst write, Turn cntics out of mere revenge and spite John Dryden .140'!-/ A entre IS a necessary evil, and cnticism IS an evil necessity ~ Carolyn Wells 1408 You know who cntics are? The men who have failed 1D hterature and art Berqamin Dtsraeli

80

CRITICISM

1409 1410 1411 1412 1413

1414 1415 1416 1417 1418

1419 1420 1421 " , t422 1423 1424 1425

Nature, when she Invented, manufactured and patented her authors contnved to make crItICS out of the chips that were left Oliver Wendell Holmes He IS forced to be literate about the ilhterate wrtty about the witless and coherent about the Incoherent John Crosby Has anybody ever seen a dramatic entre In the daytime? Of course not They come out after dark up to no good P G Wodehouse Pay no attention to what the cntics say there has never been set up a statue 10 honor of a entre Jean Stbeltus Among the greatest discoveries on which human mtelhgence has lighted 10 recent times there ought In my op1OlOn to be reckoned the art of cnticizmg books without having read them Georg C Lichtenberg The lot of cntics IS to be remembered by what they failed to understand George Moore Even the lion has to defend himself against files German Proverb A drama cntic IS a man who leaves no turn unstoned George Bernard Shaw A good writer IS not, per se a good book entre No more so than a good drunk IS automatically a good bartender 11m Bishop Confronted by an absolutely mfunatmg review It IS sometimes helpful for the victim to do a little personal research on the critic Is there any truth to the rumor that he had no formal education beyond the age of eleven? In any event IS he able to construct a SImple English sentence? Are hIS modifiers misplaced? Do his participles dangle? When moved to lyricism does he wnte I had a fun time?' Was he ever arrested for burglary? I don t know that you WIll prove anything this way but It IS perfectly harmless and quite soothing Jean Kerr A book reviewer IS usually a barker before the door of a publisher s CIrcus A usttn 0 Malley There IS not a single dramatic CrItIC m London who would deliberately set himself to misrepresent the work of any dramatist-eunless of course he personally dishked the dramatist Oscar Wilde A entre IS a fellow whose watch IS five minutes ahead of other people's Charles Augustin Satnte-Beuve CRITICISM Don't abuse your friends and expect them to consider It cnticism Edgar W Howe To aVOId cnticism do nothing, say nothing be nothmg Elbert Hubbard Show me the man who InSIStSthat he welcomes CrItICIsm If only It IS "constructive" and r WIll show you a man who does not want any cnncism at all Harold L Ickes Cntrcism IS a study by which men grow Important and formidable at very small expense Samuel J ohnson

CROCODILE CULTURE

81

1426 1427 1428 1429 1430

1431 1432 1433

Never speak III of yourself your friends will always say enough on that subject Charles M de Talleyrand Perigord Criticism IS the art wherewith a entre tnes to guess hunself into a share of the artist s fame George Jean Nathan Criticism of our contemporaries IS not crrtrcism, It IS conversation Jules Lemaitre I hke cnticism, but It must be my way Mark Twain The method IS to take a well-known poem analyze It stanza by stanza and lme by lme and extract, squeeze, tease press every drop of meanIng out of It It might be called the lemon squeezer school of cnticism T S Eliot I have never found m a long experience of pohtics, that cnticism IS ever mhibrted by Ignorance Harold Macmillan Ideal dramatic cnticrsm IS unqualified appreciatron Oscar Wilde How doth the httle crocodile Improve hIS shmmg tall And pour the waters of the NIle On every golden scale' How How And WIth cheerfully he seems to grm, neatly spreads hIS claws, welcomes little fishes in gently srmlmg jaws! LeWIS Carroll
In

CROCODILE

1434

I do not believe Thomas Carlyle

CROWDS the collective WIsdom of mdividual Ignorance

1435

CRYING Crying IS the refuge of plain women, but the rum of pretty ones Oscar Wilde CUCKOO The cuckoo who IS on to hunself IS halfway out of the clock Wilson Mizner CUCUMBER A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed WIth pepper and VInegar, and then thrown out as good for nothmg Samuel Johnson CULTURE Culture IS what your butcher would have If he were a surgeon Mary Pettibone Poole Culture IS hke the sum of special knowledge that accumulates 1D any large umted family and IS the common property of all Its members When we of the great Culture Family meet, we exchange remimscences about Grandfather Homer and that awful old Dr Johnson, and Aunt Sappho and poor Johnny Keats Aldous Huxley

1436

1437

1438 1439

82 1440 She Invariably was first over the fence ture George Ade
In

CURIOSITY CYNIC the mad pursuit of cuI

1441 1442 1443 1444 1445 1446 1447 1448

CURIOSITY Zaccheus he, DId climb a tree, HIS Lord to see New England Primer You know what a woman's CurIOSIty rs=-almost as great as a man's Oscar WIlde The public have an msatiable cunosrty to know everythmg except what IS worth knowing Ibid The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business George Bernard Shaw HIstory may be read as the story of the magmficent rearguard action fought dunng several thousand years by dogma against CurIOSIty Robert Lynd A man should hve If only to satisfy hIS CUriOSIty Yiddssb Proverb CUSTOM Have a place for everything and keep the thmg somewhere else, this IS not advice, It IS merely custom Mark Twam When the Quaker Penn kept hIS hat on m the royal presence, Charles [King Charles II] politely removed hIS, explainmg that It was the custom In that place for only one person at a time to remain covered Arthur Bryant The difference between law and custom IS that It takes a lot of nerve to violate a custom Anonymous

1449

1450 1451

CYNIC To the cymc nothing IS ever revealed Oscar WIlde A cymc IS a man who knows the pnce of everythmg and the value of nothing Ibid 1452 Cynicism IS intellectual dandyism George Meredith 1453 A cymc 18 Just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset James Gould Cozzens 1454 A cynic IS a man who looks at the world with a monocle In hIS mind's eye Carolyn Wells 1455 A cyme IS a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin H L Mencken 1456 It takes a clever man to rum cynic, and a WIse man to be clever enough not to Fannie Hurst 1457 Cynic a blackguard whose faulty VISIon sees thmgs as they are, not as they ought to be Ambrose BIerce 1458 Cynic a man who tells you the truth about your own motives Russell Green 1459 The cynics, those canme philosophers St Aueustine

CZAR DEATH

83

1460 1461

When the Czar gives an egg he takes a hen Russian Proverb When the Czar has a cold all Russia coughs Ibid

CZAR

...
1462 1463 1464

• ••

DANCING I don't thmk much of a dance step where the girl looks like she was being earned out of a burning buildmg Frank McKinney Hubbard Dancing wonderful training for girls, It s the first way you learn to guess what a man IS gomg to do before he does It Christopher Morley Some dance floors are so crowded you can't tell who your partner IS Judge DANGER The only great danger that exists IS man himself C F Jung The most dangerous thmg In the world IS to try to leap a chasm lD two Jumps David Lloyd George I asked a Burmese why women, after centunes of following their men now walk ahead He said there were many unexploded land mines SInce the war Robert Mueller DARLING Darling the popular form of address used In speaking to a person of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment recall Oliver Herford A daughter IS an embarrassmg and ticklish possessIon Brilliant daughter, cranky wIfe Dutch Proverb Dawn the time when men of reason go to bed DAUGHTER Menander

1465 1466 1467

1468

1469 1470 1471 1472

DAWN Ambrose Bierce

DEAD What If a man IS buried alive from time to time For every such person there are a hundred dead men walking the earth Georg C Lichtenberg DEAF He thinks himself deaf because he no longer hears himself talked of Charles M de Talleyrand-Pengord speaking of Chateaubnand In hu old age DEATH Only the young me good Oliver Herford Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race WIth a

1473

1474 1475

84

DEBATE DEBT

1476 1477 1478 1479 1480 1481 1482 1483 1484 1485 1486 1487 1488 1489 1490 1491 1492 1493

greater fund of Innocent amusement than any other single subject Dorothy L Sayers All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing Maurice Maeterltnck A man's dying IS more the survivors' affair than hIS own Thomas Mann I know of nobody that has a mmd to die this year Thomas Fuller Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have It known Lord Chesterfield When a man dies, and hIS kin are glad of It they say, "He IS better off" Edgar W Howe I don't think anything IS ever quite the same to us after we are dead Don MarqUIS Death to stop smnmg suddenly Elbert Hubbard Everythmg comes to him who waite=-among other thrngs, death FranCIS H Bradley The long habrt of Irving mdisposeth us for dying Sir Thomas Browne We all labor agamst our own cure for death IS the cure of all diseases Ibid The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated Mark Twam Those who welcome death have only tried It from the ears up Wilson Mizner One can survive everything nowadays except death Oscar Wilde My wallpaper IS killing me One of us must go Ibid as he lay dyzng tn the Hotel d Alsace In Paris I am mformed from many quarters that a rumor has been put about that I died this mornmg [February, 1951] ThIS IS qUIte untrue Sir Wmston Churchill I cannot forgive my friends for dying I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing Logan Pearsall Smith Death ndes a fast camel Arab Proverb To his phYSICian who said General, I fear the angels are watttng for you' Wartmg, are they? Waiting, are they? Well let 'em wait' Ethan Allen DEBATE It s better to debate a question WIthout settling It than to settle a question WIthout debating It Joseph Joubert DEBT Debt IS a trap WhICh a man sets and baits himself, and then de hberately gets into Josh Btllings Never run into debt, not If you can find anything else to run into Ib,d

1494

1495 1496

DECENCY DECISION

8S

1497 1498 1499 1500 1501 1502 1503 1504 1505 1506 1507 1508 1509 1510 1511

God forbid that I should be out of debt, as If indeed I could not be trusted Francois Rabelais If you want the nme to pass quickly Just give your note for nmety days Robert Bailey Thomas A man properly must pay the fiddler In my case It so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized John Barrymore In the midst of hfe we are In debt Ethel Watts Mumford Debts shorten life Joseph Joubert The old woman who triumphantly announced that she had borrowed money enough to pay all her debts P L Lord It IS only by not paymg our bills that we can hope to hve In the memory of the commercial classes Oscar Wilde You are not In debt Sextus I assure you Sextus you are not In debt, for a man IS m debt Sextus only If he can pay Martial Some people use one half of their mgenurty to get into debt and the other half to aVOId paymg It George D Prentice A small debt produces a debtor a large one an enemy Publtlius Syrus Scientists say that certain musical notes can prevent sleep So can certam promIssory notes professor Arkansas Gazette It IS a sure SIgn of an Improved character If you like paYing debts as much as getting money Georg C Lichtenberg The two greatest stimulants m the world are youth and debt Ben tamm Dtsraelt Austin 0 Malley A habit of debt IS very InJUrIOUS the memory to Decency Shaw IS indecency s conspIracy of silence DECENCY George Bernard

1512 1513 1514

1515 1516 1517

DECEPTION The secret of life IS to appreciate the pleasure of bemg ternbly deceived Oscar Wilde If you deceive me once you are a scoundrel If you deceive me often you are a smart man Yugoslavtc Proverb It IS m the abihty to deceive one s self that the greatest talent IS shown A natole France DECISION Decide promptly, but never give any reasons Your decision may be nght but your reasons are sure to be wrong Lord Mansfield A decision IS the action an executrve must take when he has mformanon so incomplete that the answer does not suggest Itself Arthur William Radford They are decided only to be undecided resolved to be Irresolute, adamant for drift all-powerful for Impotence Sir Wtnston Churchill

86

DEFEND DEMOCRACY ThIS beast IS very wicked, when It IS attacked, Jean de La Fontaine A state that has three counties when the tide It IS in J J Ingalls
IS

1518

DEFEND It defends Itself DELAWARE out, and two when

1519

1520 1521

DELICATESSEN I let Earl go WIth me to a dehcatessen Just once We never could afford It again Mrs Earl Warren I can never resist a dehcatessen I hate eating alone, except things you can sort of cuddle up on the couch WIth like potato salad John Van Druten DELINQUENCY I am convinced that every boy, In hIS heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile Tom C Clark It IS dangerous to confuse children WIth angels DaVId Maxwell Fyle DEMAGOGUE A WIse fellow who IS also worthless always charms the rabble Euripides The demagogue IS one who preaches doctnnes he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idrots H L Mencken DEMOCRACY Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for ap pomtment by the corrupt few George Bernard Shaw Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors Ralph Waldo Emerson Democracy IS also a form of religion, It IS the worship of Jackals by Jackasses H L Mencken In democracies, those who lead follow, those who follow lead Hoi brook Jackson All real democracy 18 an attempt (hke that of a Jolly hostess) to bring the shy people out G K Chesterton Democracy means government by the uneducated, while anstocracy means government by the badly educated lbtd A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic mstrtutions rm possible Bertrand Russell Democracy IS the recurrent SUspIcIon that more than half of the people are nght more than half of the time E B Whzte Democracy means SImply the bludgeomng of the people, by the people, for the people Oscar WIlde Democracy IS good I say this because other systems are worse Jawaharlal Nehru

1522 1523

1524 1525

1526 1527 1528 1529 1530 1531 1532 1533 1534 1535

DEMOCRATIC

PARTY DEPRESSION

87

1536 1537

1538 1539 1540

Democracy IS a condrtion where people believe that other people are as good as they are Stuart Chase Stnp the human race absolutely naked and It would be a real democracy But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin or a cow tall, could make a badge of drstinction and be the beginning of a monarchy Mark Twain Democracy down here IS like a baby-and nobody gives a baby everything to eat nght away I m giving 'em liberty but In my style Anastasio Somoza When everybody IS somebody, then nobody ISanybody Anonymous Democracy IS liberty plus economic security We Americans want to pray, think as we please-and eat regular Maury Maverick: DEMOCRATIC PARTY The Democratic Party IS like a mule It has neither pnde of ancestry nor hope of postenty Ignatius Donnelly The Democratic Party IS hke a man riding backward In a carnage It never sees a thmg until It has gone by Beruamin F Butler I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers What I said was that all saloonkeepers were Democrats Horace Greeley DENOMINATIONS It IS becoming impossible for those who mix With their fellowmen to believe that the grace of God IS distributed denommanonally Wtlltam RInge DENTIST Dentists and solicitors These are the people to whom we always show our best Side Samuel Butler Dentist a presndigrtator who putting metal In your mouth pulls coins out of your pocket Ambrose BIerce A dentist at work m his vocation always looks down in the mouth George D Prenttce For the dental associatron we suggest the slogan 'Be true to your teeth or they WIll be false to you' Anonymous DENUNCIATION The denunciation of the young IS a necessary part of the hygiene of older people and greatly assists the circulanon of their blood Logan Pearsall Smuh DEPENDABLE Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other William Tecumseh Sherman DEPRESSION Once upon a time my polrtical opponents honored me as possessmg

1541 1542 1543

1544

1545 1546 1547 1548

1549

1550

1551

88

DESCRIPTION DETOUR

1552 1553

the fabulous intellectual and economic power by WhICh I created a worldwide depression all by myself Herbert Hoover Depressions may bnng people closer to the church-but so do funerals Clarence Darrow The times are not so bad as they seem, they couldn t be lay Franklin DESCRIPTION He was white and shaken, like a dry martmi P G W ode house Well, I m about as tall as a shotgun, and Just as nOISY Truman Capote The poor man
S

1554 1555

1556 1557 1558 1559

method of divorce

DESERTION Arthur Garfield Hays

DESIRE Any time you don t want anything you get It Calvin Coolidge There are two tragedies 10 life One IS to lose your heart's desire The other IS to gam It George Bernard Shaw I like to walk down Bond Street, thmkmg of all the things I don t desrre Logan Pearsall Smith I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise Wortley Montagu He despises men With tenderness Anatole France An expression of self satisfied despondency face Maxim Gorky He that's born to be hanged needn't fear water A rat who gnaws at a eat's tall Invites destruction DESPISE Mary

1560 1561 1562

DESPONDENCY appeared on his dry DESTINY IrISh Proverb DESTRUCTION Chinese Proverb

1563 1564 1565

DETAilS One should absorb the color of hfe, but one should never remember ItS details Details are always vulgar Oscar Wilde DETECTIVE My theory IS that people who don t hke detective stones are anarchists Rex Stout I m having a wonderful time I can't figure out who did the ktllmg Mary Roberts Rinehart DETOUR Something that lengthens your mileage, dimmishes your gas and strengthens your vocabulary Oliver Herford

1566 1567

1568

DEVIL DIFFERENCE

89

1569 1570 1571 1572 1573

DEVIL The Devil IS a gentleman who never goes where he IS not welcome John A Lincoln The Devil was sick-e-the Devil a monk would be, The Devil was well-the DeVIl a monk was he Francois Rabelats The Devil comes where money IS where It IS not he comes twice Swedish Proverb All religions Issue Bibles agamst Satan and say the most mjunous thmgs against him but we never hear bIS side Mark Twam An apology for the Devil It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case God has written all the books Samuel Butler DiagnOSISIS one of the commonest diseases DIAGNOSIS Karl Kraus

1574 1575

DIAMONDS Let us not be too particular It IS better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all Mark Twam DIARY It IS a sort of ' white book' concerrung my negotiations WIth myselfand God Dag Hammarskiold Everyone should keep someone else s diary Oscar Wilde The best throw of the dice IS to throw them away DICE Austm 0 Malley

1576 1577 1578 1579

DICKENS, CHARLES One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell Without laughing Oscar WIlde DICTATORS It IS useless for the sheep to pass resolutions In favor of vegetarianIsm, while the wolf remains of a different opInion William R Inge DICTIONARY Dictionanes are hke watches the worst IS better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true Samuel Johnson The trouble wrth the dictionary IS that you have to know how a word IS spelled before you can look It up to see how It IS spelled Wzll Cuppy Dictionary a malevolent lrterary device for crampmg the growth of a language and making It hard and melasnc Ambrose Bierce DIFFERENCE The difference between Balfour and Asquith IS that Arthur IS WIcked and moral, Asquith IS good and Immoral Sir Wznston ChurchIll

1580

1581 1582 1583

~ 1584

90

DIFFICULTDINNER

1585 1586 1587

There IS one difference between a tax collector and a taxiderrmst-cthe taxidermist leaves the hide Mortimer Caplan The difference between us and our neighbor IS that we don t tell half of what we know while he doesn't know half of what he tells George D Prentice When a man and woman die, as poets sung, HIs heart s the last part moves her last the tongue Betuamm Franklin DIFFICULT Don t argue about the drfficulnes The difficulties will argue for themselves Sir Wznston Churchill The difficult part about making good IS that you have to repeat It every day Herbert V Prochnow DIGESTION Indigestion Is-that Inward fate Which makes all Styx through one small liver flow Lord Bryon To eat IS human to digest drvme Charles Townsend Copeland I am convinced digestion IS the great secret of hfe Sydney Smith Indigestion IS charged by God With enforcing moralrty on the stomach Victor Hugo DIGNITY The eagle does not catch fires Anonymous He [Robert Peel] never unbuttons himself Anonymous Dignity IS like a top hat Neither IS very much use when you are standing on It Christopher Hollis It IS only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their digmty Arnold Bennett All celebrated people lose dignity on a close view Napoleon I A dimple
In

1588 1589

1590 1591 1592 1593

1594 1595 1596 1597 1598 1599 1600

the chin, a devil wrthm

Irish. Proverb

DIMPLE

DINING I maintain that though you would often In the fifteenth century have heard the snobbish Roman say in a would-be offhand tone, 'I am dnnng With the Borgias tonight, ' no Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night With the Borgias Max Beerbohm DINNER A man seldom thinks With more earnestness of anythmg than he does of his dinner Samuel Johnson A man IS in general better pleased when he has a good runner on his table, than when his WIfe talks Greek Ibid This was a good enough dinner, to be sure but It was not a dmner to ask a man to Ibid

1601 1602 1603

DIPLOMACY DIPLOMAT

91

1604_.·1\t a dmner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely W Somerset Maugham 1605 After a good dinner one forgives everyone--even relations Oscar Wilde 1606 All human history attests That happiness for man-the hungry smnerSince Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner! Lord Byron 1607 I go by tummy time and I want my dinner Sir Wmston Churchill 1608 There S somebody at every dmner party who eats all the celery Frank McKmney Hubbard 1609 Heavenly Father bless us And keep us all ahve There's ten of us to dinner And not enough for five Anonymous 1610 Nice eaters seldom meet With a good dinner Thomas Fuller 1611 The family that dmes the latest Is In our street esteemed the greatest Henry Fielding 1612 1613 1614 1615 1616 1617 1618 1619 1620 1621 1622 1623 1624 DIPLOMACY" Diplomacy IS to do and say The nasnest things in the nicest way Isaac Goldberg The atmosphere of accredited mendacity Lord Acton Diplomacy the patnotic art of lymg for one s country Ambrose Bierce International arbrtration may be defined as the substitution of many burrung questions for a smoldering one Ibid Diplomacy IS the art of lettmg someone have your way Danzele Vare American diplomacy IS easy on the brain but hell on the feet Charles Gates Dawes The art of acceptance IS the art of making someone who has Just done you a small favor WIsh that he might have done you a greater one Russell Lynes Conferences at the top level are always courteous Name callmg IS left to the foreign mmisters Averell Hamman All ambassadors make love and are very nice and useful to people who travel George Bernard Shaw Diplomacy lymg in state Oliver Herford DIPLOMAT It IS fortunate that diplomats generally have long noses, SInce usually they cannot see beyond them Anonymous When a diplomat says yes he means perhaps, when he says perhaps he means no when he says no he IS no diplomat Anonymous I have discovered the art of deceivmg diplomats I speak the truth, and they never beheve me Count di Cavour